In honor of the paperback edition of 'The Field Guide to the North American Teenager' by Ben Philippe being released TODAY (!!!) I wanted to share my process for the cover that I completed over the summer.

Chris Kwon, who is the amazing, lovely, incredible designer I've been working with established that we wanted Norris (the main character) to stand out while also including the cliques referenced in the book as well as some of the secondary characters a la Mean Girls. My (very) rough sketches, taking Chris's lead, were set in high school bleachers, a hallway, and a high school party. 

I had initially included Norris holding a notebook, making a reference to the title but that was scrapped pretty early on. We new we wanted him to look like he stood out while also being uncomfortable and a little awkward.

We decided to move forward on the party sketch and I started to refine from there. Norris suddenly lost his hands as they migrated to his pockets and the secondary characters started to look like real people. We also changed Norris's face to more of an uncomfortable but sarcastic smirk and sized him up so that he wasn't in the thick of it. 

Color was fun! We had the choice between a red t-shirt and a black t-shirt for our main character and went with the red. Chris also asked me if I could try doing the lettering for the title and the author's name. I said "Sure!" and now my handwriting can be found in your local library and/or bookstore.

Thank you for reading and please, check out the book if you see it in the wild!