CHILDREN'S PUBLISHING · ILLUSTRATION · BOOK DESIGN
Gertie McDougle Plays the Bugle
A colorful children’s story from the Wordie Bird Tales series about music, persistence, friendship, and one very enthusiastic bugle player.
The
Project
What happens when you love making music just a little too much?
Gertie McDougle Plays the Bugle follows Gertie as she discovers just how much she loves playing her bugle — even when everyone around her is begging for a little quiet.
I illustrated and designed the book for the Wordie Bird Tales series, developing the story into an energetic visual experience filled with expressive characters, interactive moments, colorful typography, speech bubbles, and musical details.
My work included character illustration, scene development, interior layout, cover design, typography, and final print-production preparation.
Loud notes.
Big personality.
One determined
bugle player.
Cover
Design
The cover needed to feel musical before the reader even opened the book.
Gertie takes center stage playing her bugle while colorful musical notes travel across the scene. The surrounding birds react dramatically, immediately introducing the humor and conflict of the story.
Bright sky blues, greens, pinks, yellows, expressive typography, flowers, clouds, and playful speech bubbles create an energetic children’s publishing aesthetic while maintaining the visual identity of the Wordie Bird Tales series.
FRONT COVER
BACK COVER
Finding the
Rhythm
Musical Storytelling
Musical notes, sound effects, instruments, movement, and expressive lettering help the reader feel the sound and rhythm of each scene.
Expression
Gertie’s confidence and the increasingly dramatic reactions of Wordie Bird and the others create much of the humor in the story.
Interaction
Questions, speech bubbles, repetition, vocabulary, and reader prompts turn the book into a more participatory reading experience.
Inside
the Book
Selected illustrated spreads showing the story’s playful mix of music, humor, interaction, and character.
From Illustration to Print.
The project continued long after the illustrations were finished.
The final book required careful interior layout, page sequencing, typography, cover preparation, image placement, and technical file setup.
I prepared the square 8.5 × 8.5-inch book for professional printing while accounting for bleed, margins, resolution, color, transparency, and PDF export requirements.
Working through the publishing process gave me experience beyond illustration and strengthened my understanding of how design decisions carry from the first sketch through the finished printed book.
PROJECT SCOPE
A little music,
a lot of illustration,
and one very determined
bugle player.