CHALLENGE
Create campaign visuals that expressed the epic and cinematic nature of the World of Eragon while working with limited design assets from the book's package.
RESULTS
Campaign visuals focused on a dragon scale background as key art. In-world map art was used as an overlay to extend the visual narrative where possible. The final campaign visuals helped to catapult Murtagh to the New York Times Bestseller list for 5 months.
SPECIALTIES
Branding • Creative & Art Direction
• Hands-On Design • Print Collateral • Digital Collateral • Point of Purchase • Experiential / Trade Show Design
Consistent visuals across multiple touchpoints were the result of a clear style guide of assets that scaled the different deliverables. All campaign elements were designed to complement and extend the visual narrative of the book's package without giving away any plot details. Large dragon scales as the main key art reinforced the large and imposing nature of the dragon
Once it was announced that we were publishing Christopher Paolini’s Murtagh, I pulled the team together to brainstorm a visual direction. From our experiences with various stakeholders, we observed three desired qualities for the focus of campaign visuals: 1) there should be dragons; 2) there should be fire; 3) the campaign should feel cinematic. Not having full-size dragon art from the new package design added an additional challenge.
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Three designers each developed a visual direction. These three options quickly passed through Marketing, Editorial, and author stakeholders for approval with minimal requested changes. Visual direction #2 was the winner. From there we concurrently created design assets for all initial deliverables and developed a style guide for external partnerships utilizing those design assets.
Murtagh was announced in February for a November on-sale date. The initial announcement utilized the shared dragon shadow, landscape, and map artwork from the paperback reissues of the Inheritance series (Eragon series) as the package design did not offer any full-size dragon art. This served two purposes: 1) Bridge the newly reissued Inheritance series with the upcoming Murtagh; 2) allowed us to respond quickly and nimbly with social media announcement and Amazon A+ assets to increase visibility. This visual direction was always intended to be a bridge and not the visual direction for the Murtagh campaign.
Role: Team Lead / Sr. Art Director • Designers: Michael C., Mike R., Mark P. • Marketers: Jules K., Regina A. • Art © 2023 by John Jude Palancar. Map art © 2023 by Christopher Paolini. Composite art © 2023 by Adobe Stock. • For: Random House Children’s Books / Alfred A. Knopf • 2023​