Children’s books have changed a lot since our day, and so has their production. Frankly we wish there had been something like the new “Hide & Eek!” when we were small.
Created by Hat-Trick Design and published by Knock Knock, this picture book finds just the right balance between papers to pull off something unique.
Designed to be read under the covers, “Hide & Eek!” contains 21 hidden illustrations just waiting to pop out at the reader once a flashlight is activated behind each page. Discover all the aquatic creatures in the sea, the wide-awake sheep beneath a sleeping girl’s bed – this is the kind of augmented reality you can’t help but embrace.
Each illustration is hidden within partially glued and French folded pages; the challenge was to get the paper thickness just right. Too thick and the effect doesn’t work; not thick enough and you see the hidden illustrations without the flashlight. A lot of different paper colors and basis weights were tried.
“Initially, we were simply printing images on the reverse,” Hat-Trick’s Jim Sutherland told DesignWeek.co.uk. “But it’s much more magical when they are hidden in the duplexed pages.”
