Ben Newman

0:44 No no no no this is what would go through my head when I used to work in a bookshop and some would come in and say look any books on space and they'd be like yeah just over here ah they're all the same. And it looks like the art director is locked himself in the office with a gun in his mouth it's just going I've just given up on life I mean it's just so bad and basically all all of the books that I would show to customers coming into the shop were just photographs that have been annotated and I was I was working full-time in a bookshop and I was illustrating in the evenings and I thought at one point I left the bookshop eventually and I started this same frustration by I really remembered this key point where someone came in and asked for a map about the solar system so I took them over to this book stand they flick through it it's loads of lame' tape laminated images just like this. And I figured unless your child's part cyborg they're probably not gonna find it that interesting so I thought okay I'll give it a whirl myself see what I can do so I did this poster this is about 5 years old admittedly I'm using a lot of back black it's not the it's not great it's not better than what those things are just showing you were but it's different and it offered an alternative and I also collect lots of old science books Wow back in the 50s and 60s when you know just before spa especially this one this is like 56 we haven't gone into space yet so when these books were coming out. There was this great sense of wonder I wonder what Mars would look like that's nothing like that what the moon doesn't anyway and there's some boobs yeah these have this great sense of fascination you know. There was there's no photograph just these beautiful beautiful drawings and I thought isn't it a shame that the sense of wonder artistically has sort of died with with space and I was given this book by my publisher.

2:33 Actually. And it's this Japanese book it's completely it's complete chaos but it's incredible every every page is different this is about how long it would take to get to the moon very via various forms of travel this is if you were to fly to the moon with your wife or husband depending on agenda how long it would take to get there and how many kids you're likely to have by the time you come back these are some of the aliens at my invade I mean wow he's a pretty pretty freakin cool but the these aren't these aren't from space these are from my private collection I really really really really like cats especially this guy on the left and I also like drawings of cats as well as photos of cats but I really like when people get creative with their photographs I just literally every time I look at this makes me feel such joy and I also like ceramics of cats too. And I also like it when cats look through their family albums so so just to get started I have it I have a character called professor Astro cat and he's a cat in a spacesuit see who I did there took space and cats yeah take two things you like but it originally a stroke at was actually a design for a record label for a job that never went anywhere a guy asked me to draw a cat in a spacesuit with record label I did the work I sent it off I never had everything back needless to say him get paid but I did this drawing I made it into a print it sold well and magma turned it into a bag and I kind of left it for a very long time until it got stuck for an idea to do some wrapping paper for my publisher no brown and I thought I'll just resurrect this old character and redraw it and you know maybe I can make some wrapping paper so I made some wrapping paper and surprisingly it sold quite well. And it was around this time I'd been talking to my friend Dominic who is a has not really Dominic everyone that's dominate and actually just funnily enough funnily enough that Nutella bottle is just the normal Nutella bottle he's just the size of a Sylvain Ian family but he's he's surprisingly enough he is not surprising enough he's he's very very clever and he's also a pH has a PhD in physics he works in Vancouver as a quantum fist he works on quantum computers knows more than all that is but it sounds complicated anyway he's he's amazing at explaining things to people things that are very difficult he's explained quantum computer to me numerous times and for about 20 minutes I think I had it. And I asked him on Christmas if he'd like to do a book with me.

5:21 So this is how this came about and one of the things I wanted to take from the old science books I showed you earlier on was this for color print process so the actual color breakdown for the covers are like this the whole book is actually printed in four spot colors so it's pink blue yellow that's really yellow and purple and then if you built them all up and play around with them you then get the finished cover so basically I just kind of wanted to create an alternative to those books that I showed you at the very beginning that would photograph that annotated just something that felt like it it had was made with some love and I think that's actually missing from a lot of elements of design these days in terms of advertising and and yeah this guy's I've got a lot of slides not much time I'm bit hot I'm on like bin number five because they were like free beer I was like cool guys this this role so yeah.

6:26 I just I wanted to create a cast of characters that take you through the book and explain space to you.

6:31 But it's all well and good looking at a couple of finished images but they the the interesting thing sorry instantly this is the least informative talking of all the talking's this evening mine I just you can ask me a question about safe space and I won't know anything.

6:44 So I'm so glad I'm on last because you've actually had some really good information from the tastic speakers and then just get this like red-faced Englishman so anyway it starts up with all these roughs and me and Dominic would make lists and in books and try and work out the order what we wanted to do is not have a Content page and to actually feel like a linear narrative where you you can turn to any page but if you read it in order everything is explained to you in just the right way. So it creates a narrative as opposed to kind of just a regular information book and yeah we went through various roughs Dominic would correct me on things.

7:22 And it was frustrating but it was what we needed to do and I would build up these layers on the computer and check in with him to make sure there's the Sun and then we would create these these finished pages where do you reckon it's going is it going to is it going it is it going towards Whitechapel or Dalston we don't know we don't know. And we'd have lots of e-mails back and forth where I hate on where's the solar system is it here.

8:00 And then we would have fun stuff about you know how how a star is born and yeah sometimes we we never had arguments but sometimes it was like wow that's not quite like that. And I was like yeah.

8:14 So I did the solar system again this time a little bit better than last time poor Pluto there's just found out he's no longer a planet and and then we could find out all the sizes of the planets based on fruit and there are some facts actually I should put one fact I should've got some facts at the end there's some facts here I can't read them it's too blurry but there are facts in this book about the moon and the International Space Station.

8:46 So it was kind of fun not having to reinterpret these things you know I used a lot of a lot of reference but it was fun to kind of play around with the colors and just to make it feel a little bit more fun basically also don't just like cats I also really like dogs and yes so sometimes sometimes I would get stuck visually for the project and Dominic would just give me suggestions so what was nice is I would help him with the writing I was like the litmus test for the project if I can understand it then a seven-year-old can and and Dominic also quite so I would help Dom sometimes with the text and Dominic would help me with the layouts and the sketches and giving me an idea of how to understand things. And then.

9:29 This is the finished result of the asteroids sketch I just showed you the Dom it seemed it was really fun looking at all the different types of spacesuits that were made and maybe never even used but they just looked really really cool and it was really great getting to actually finding reference material for this spacesuit was surprisingly difficult it's a fact for you there.

9:51 And sometimes I get really stuck and actually don't this is this is one of the bits I'm really pleased with this is Dominic's drawing this is I got so stuck on how to draw a rocket in hyperspace so that it would everything would moving fast on the outside but slow on the inside so Dominic sent me this sketch which really helped and then I literally took it literally and put it into the into the image which was which was really nice it's nice to have a collaboration where we share and it's not just a one way street and then the book got published last October we incredibly sold 10,000 copies in the first five months which is genuinely jaw-dropping for me personally and I think it's been translated into nine languages now which I think seven of which come out later in the year and the others come out later next year.

10:42 And then from that I redesigned some brand new wrapping paper based on the previous one using all the characters from the book never let an idea go to waste guys just keep digging yeah save saves on thinking I tell you.

10:57 And then there they were in space and then.

11:01 I thought we'll committee for the other one put on a planet yeah that throw people and here's some facts just so there is something informative in this talk we are all star people our bodies are made up of atoms they were created in the core of a dying star you can see Earth from the space station than if you know that you can the word galaxy comes from the Greek but you can read that go you got it you got the gist and also I thought this is really cool fire burns as a circular flame in zero gravity and then he's real why it's not real there's no one inside of that guys don't be silly but my friend felt mister just made a physical copy to go along with promoting the book and hopefully from there we can make more informative science books for children with love thanks very much for listening to me