I've shown the process of producing the cover for the Collins Picture Atlas. Here is how the internal pages were designed and produced by myself, Kevin Robbins, head designer at Collins (Glasgow division) and Anne Mahon, the Managing Editor for this project.

 

This first image shows a kind of mood board I was asked to produce to be presented to Kevin and Anne for a meeting in Glasgow in May of last year. They were very happy with the style of content and exciting colours of each country on the page. I had created just enough of a brightness and charm that they had imagined for this title.

 

 

After their feedback, I amended the design to be less cluttered and with the stripey border, that Anne had really liked, to be reused around the location map at the bottom of the page.

Amazingly, this sample was used for the final design for South America that went to print.

I was then asked to produce global maps to show how colours would be used to distinguish each country from each other. This only became complicated around the continent of Europe with so many different countries in such a small area.

Next I was asked to produce the map for Africa to see how strong the design and style of the book. It was also needed to be tested at the Stuttgart Book fair in October of 2014. 

I then started sketching the animals that would appear in the Africa spread.
 

Here is Africa with new artwork included. I was asked to try the land from other continents with a different colour but eventually thie beige was considred too strong on the page and detracted from the main art. Kevin and Anne also toyed with the idea of this image being used for the cover briefly until their decision not to use maps or globes as the main image.

Here is the final design for Africa. There is one exception, the Desert Fox in Libya was replaced by oil wells. 

With each continent there would be two to three 'essence' pages. These pages would contain facts that would represent the essence of each continent with supportive illustrations. Below are two ideas I had of how these pages would look.

 

The the two sketches show how a location map could be incorporated into the spread. Either there would be a location map for each fact or one map showing all locations for the facts. Anne decided just one location map would be enough on the page which made the spreads look less cluttered and confusing.

 

I was asked to source various facts for each continent. I so got carried away with facts that I found, not thinking that later I would also have to illustrate the facts that I had chosen. Some would be a challenge.

Here are the two final South America 'essence' spreads, one spread for South America North and the other for South America South.