colouring books research

Above is a selection of adult colouring books that i looked at for research in Fred Aldous. Below are two examples that i thought were particularly good examples.

Above is a floral colouring book, I thought this was a good example as the structure of the book was well thought out, and had a simplistic yet effective binding method. the book had an introduction that is a brief description of the books background and then went straight into the colouring images. Under all the colouring images was a description of the image, the title and also the designers name. The struct of the book is simple yet effective as it has a front and back cover, a cover page inside, and introduction and then the colouring content. The book is perfect for its intended purpose as it straight to the content but also add the added information to contextualise it, as well as being around a5 in size which is perfect as it is small enough to take with you places, but still large enough for the images to retain their detail. The books binding method is very different as the inside is tape bound and is then attatched to coated card that is used to create another front and back cover to the book. This style of binding would protect the pages on the inside as well as allowing you to remove for coloured pages from the book.

Above is the David bowie colouring book. This book is also a good example as its structure is also straight to the point yet well thought out. The book starts with a brief backstory and then continues that story of David thought the book but matching it with a relevant image to colour. This tells a story and engages the read at the same time. The front cover also makes it clear that it is a colouring book with its choice of imagery, the black and white lined drawing of David on the front and colourful background behind, and would be recognised as a colouring book without the title. The book is perfect bound with a thick almost card like paper. the outer cover is coated so that the book is most durable.

When I searched for graphic design colouring books to see if there was anything on the market aimed at my intended audience I found nothing like it, there was only pattern colouring books and nothing educational. I then went on to search for educational colouring books and could only find two examples of them for children which irrelevant to my intended audience, Because of this dead end i came to the conclusion that i had found a gap in the market.  

Colouring book prices

When researching a range of different adult colouring books i found that the price range varied massively, ranging from £3 to £10. The price was determined on the retailer and theme of the book. The bigger than shop name the higher the price, which was the same with the theme, the most popular the theme was the higher the books price. For my audience of students i need to take into consideration their low budgets as students dont have a large budget for the necessary text books so their budget for other books will be even more limited, because of this i think a good idea would be to give the students in universities a copy if they were studying the topic but this would limit the production methods as the budget would be very low. Alternatively it would have to be sold at around £5 to raise the money to make the book have so durability to last.