@Asyas_illos thank you!

@Griffin-McPherson What's it look like with the color on the 2nd option? I think having both to compare will help you make your final decision.

@Melissa-Bailey-0, you didn’t step on any toes at all. Your advice has been great and I’ll definitely heed it next time. Thank you!

Well, since you all helped me so much, I figured I should post here the final version. I still can change it if any of you have any suggestions, though.

Thank you everybody for all the comments, suggestions and, in a sense, lessons, I should say!

7E0DF324-47B2-4E15-B5F8-E45D0C650CD0.jpeg

Hey guys, this is where we are at so far.
Thoughts?

0-Cover11.jpg

Hey all! Hope everyone is doing great.
I've been away from the forums for a long time but I'm back on the look for some fresh new eyes on our project.
The situation we have now is basically that we don't know how to make the Viber for this book POP! While the interior art is going smooth this part is stuck.
The book is about budgeting for children and this is what we have as of now, only thing missing is the title text and colors.
Any thoughts on how we can make it more interesting?
Cheers!

0-Cover8.jpg

If a designer is going to designing for bleed they also need to be designing for gutter or clear space. That's rarely mentioned in any specs. If you have a 1/8" bleed, you also need a 1/8" inside gutter to keep clear of any import information/text/etc. more is better in this case.

@cszoltan Thanks! I was hoping to try a more comic book style 🙂

To answer your question on the bleed, the bleed is not the grey area. The grey area is there not only to frame the final comp a bit more, but also allow one to draw beyond the edge of the piece.

OzCover_BLEEDEXAMPLE.jpg

As for what to do with the bleed area, I'd say to include it in the final image, since that is what I've done with other jobs that require bleed.

Hope that helps!