In-depth Written Interview

Simon Basher interviewed in London, England on August 31, 2011.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You are the creator of the Basher series—books that make science and other topics fun and accessible for grade school students. How do you articulate what you do?

SIMON BASHER: I currently work as a full-time illustrator, but for the previous 10-15 years I worked really more as an artist—just creating work for itself and for galleries and shows. I used to license a lot of the work to different companies—I specialize in character design, character creation, and creating unique worlds and environments.

After working on the The Periodic Table, I was introduced to a publisher and we talked about the idea of turning the periodic table that I'd created into a book and combining it with some copy and information in the first person as a way of introducing these abstract ideas. Because the Basher books have gone really well, I've been asked to do more and more of them, and now I'm working full-time as a book illustrator.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Were you an artist as a child? Did you love to draw?

SIMON BASHER: It is strange, because when I was a kid, I did exactly what I'm doing now: drawing lots of characters and different kinds of worlds and fantasies. I worked as a session musician for about 10 years, and then I decided to get back into working as an artist. I sort of found myself at the beginning, drawing characters again.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Was the household you grew up in supportive of you being an artist?

SIMON BASHER: My family has no background in the arts, but my dad and mom were both very supportive. I was always really keen on the arts and music and so they gave me a lot of encouragement. My dad really appreciated the arts. He introduced me to a lot of different artists and took me to galleries. He gave me an idea of what could be possible.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What were your interests as a teenager living in London?

SIMON BASHER: From about the age of 10 to about 15 I was really interested in hip- hop, break dancing and graffiti culture. I liked the idea of typography and character design, and graffiti was something that tied in with music, which was quite important to me. Although I wasn't a graffiti artist on the street, I very much liked working at home on my pad doing that kind of artwork.

Paul Klee was an important artist to me because my dad had a piece of work by him on the wall. It was the first time I encountered a piece of what was considered fine art that used graphic symbols and very simple characters. It made me see that you could work within this very graphic style to create pure artwork, rather than comics. The piece was called Gone Fishing. I have no idea why my dad had it. It had a big exclamation mark in it, which just fascinated me.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What were you producing before you became a book illustrator?

SIMON BASHER: At first I worked doing very small prints or paintings and sold them at a weekly art market in London where all different artists came together and sold their work. That went quite well, so I after a while I began doing shows and exhibitions in galleries where I started working on much larger prints, larger paintings, and some sculptures. Through the shows and exhibitions, I met people and started working with computer animation. I also did a little bit of work using characters within fashion; I did a T-shirt series, and I made characters for mobile phones. It kind of just progressed each time. As I got opportunities, I just used the characters and the designs in different ways.

TEACHINGBOOKS: In your books, you take on complex topics and mix pictures and words to help the reader understand the information.

SIMON BASHER: I don't come from a science background, although I've always been intrigued by it. It wasn't a strong subject for me at school. There are a lot of people out there that are interested in science or math, but their first encounter with it can be very overwhelming. At that point, people can lose their confidence and don't go any further with it, even though they have a strong interest in it.

One of the things that's really important to me—and has been one of the reasons why the Basher series of books has been successful—is that we make the introduction very easy and we don't make it intimidating. It is important that the student or whoever is reading it feels a confidence with it straightaway. Hopefully, they understand it, don't feel intimidated by it, and they want to go farther. I think the books are really designed as an introduction to the subject.

TEACHINGBOOKS: There are some elements of design in your series that are amazing in how they make difficult concepts accessible.

SIMON BASHER: I grew up with a lot of education books that were very functional but not particularly fun. They just gave you the information, and it was really down to you to try to work it out. Because I come from a design and illustration background, I felt as if the look and feel of the book should be as important as the information that we're trying to convey.

Once I'd gotten the characters established, I spent a lot of time looking at the design of the book, and all of the little reference points on it. At any moment, whatever page you're on, you can tell what chapter you're in. If you're flicking through the book, you can get a quick reference to which characters are on the pages. You should easily flow around the page.

After your first reading, you can go back and maybe discover something else, and then go back and discover something else. There are lots of layers to what looks like quite a simple book.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What media do you use to make your art?

SIMON BASHER: I use a software package called "Illustrator." When I first started, I used to do a lot more painting and drawing, but because of the amount of work we do and the amount of books we publish in a year, it seems to work better when I work with computer software. The reason it still has a quite a loose and kind of human feel to it is that I work with a pen tablet, which is like drawing with a pen using the computer. I don't try to make perfect shapes and perfect designs. There's still that very human, real feeling to them.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What is your process when working with an author?

SIMON BASHER: I'm working on book 25 at the moment, and things have changed a lot since the beginning. At the very beginning, the illustrations were done before the book was actually written. Then I was introduced to Dan Green and Adrian Dingle, who are both great writers. They sort of illustrated their copy with what I'd already done.

What happens now is Dan Green and I always use the same format: three bullet points at the top and the main body of information in a 150-word paragraph and then some facts at the bottom. It is always written in the first person, then I get the copy and illustrate from that.

Because I've worked with Dan for a long time, he knows what I'm looking for: some really solid information as well as some quirky fun—something interesting to help the reader remember that particular subject or idea.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What got you started drawing the periodic characters?

SIMON BASHER: I have always liked to create families or groups of characters because I like the way they can have a relationship with each other. I remember the periodic table from school as something quite dull; it just shows the elements as what they really are, and most of those are just gray lumps of rock or gases. But the actual elements themselves are very exciting and interesting.

I saw the table as groups of families or characters together, and I could see the personalities and the ideas behind each element and thought it would be great to illustrate using these ideas.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Besides The Periodic Table, what's your next best seller?

SIMON BASHER: I think the more abstract the subject is, the better the book sells. I think we do best with the abstract—we can really play with it. Physics is the next best- selling book.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please describe the format of your Physics book as a way to explain the Basher books format.

SIMON BASHER: First of all, we break the books down into chapters to help group certain elements of the book. In Physics, chapter three is called "The Wave Game," explaining all different ideas related to sound waves or frequencies. Within that, we've got water wave or sound or earthquake frequency; amplitude.

Each chapter is color-coded and features its own character. If you were flicking through the book, you could see just from the side of the book which chapter you were looking at.

Each chapter has three lines of information, which can often be slightly quirky. For example, "Digital has led to the most incredible explosion of technology." Then there are 150 words—one or two paragraphs written in the first person about the subject. What we often do at the bottom is include the date of discovery or date of invention.

Lastly there are three more serious facts. In this case, "This is the first digital computer, first communications satellite …" and on the opposing page is the character itself. In the top right corner is the logo for the book.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How do you choose your topics?

SIMON BASHER: Our main aim is to feature difficult or abstract subjects such as physics, punctuation, grammar, algebra, and math. We also look for key educational subjects such as biology, astronomy, and punctuation. We are now starting to look at a wider range, including oceans, bugs and insects, dinosaurs, and even things like music and creative writing. We are broadening out the subjects as we go.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Color seems so exciting and relevant to you.

SIMON BASHER: A lot of textbooks can be very long lines of just black-and-white copy. We created a color palette that we use again and again for the background colors that tie the book series together.

I try to use a lot of color within the characters—the line work is very simple but the color is very strong. I think it helps readers remember them; it is all part of the mnemonic of helping you remember the subject.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Your book illustrations seem to have a kind of a Japanese feel to them, like Manga.

SIMON BASHER: I spent quite a bit of time in Japan, and I am a real lover of Japanese culture. When I'm in England people always say my work looks so Japanese, and when I'm in Japan, the Japanese always say my work looks so European.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Here in the United States there is a big emphasis on helping kids understand information by learning complex concepts through literature. Your books are very good for that. Can you talk about how you ensure that the information in the Basher book series is accurate?

SIMON BASHER: Our writer, Dan Green, will research that subject to find out what is expected for the age group that the books are aimed at, then we hire two consultants who are knowledgeable in that area. With Physics we worked with a physics teacher and a physicist. Then, the book is seen by about three different editors and is crosschecked in the UK and the U.S. Because we publish a variety of foreign editions, we have to make sure that everything ties up in all those different areas as well. There is quite a lot of work is done to make sure the information is correct.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What level of research do you do before creating your illustrations?

SIMON BASHER: I do seven books a year, and each book requires between 60 to 100 illustrations, so I have limited time to research too heavily. The turnaround is so fast that I get the copy, I illustrate it, and I have to move on; some days I'm maybe doing ten illustrations a day. I react to it very fast and just focus on what the core of it is. I like to think of my knowledge of the subjects as being at about the same level as the readers most of the time. It helps me not to overwork the illustrations, not to overplay them—just get to the core of what we're trying to convey.

TEACHINGBOOKS: It's rare in your books to have an actual human-looking character. Is there a reason that you try to avoid a direct human representation?

SIMON BASHER: One of the reasons I don't create human characters is because gender varies across languages. When the books are translated into other languages, it is much better if it's a character that can work in any language. The books are in Arabic, Estonian, English, and Japanese, and every language might have a different way of interpreting it.

Also, I really like the characters to be quirky and unusual, and I think it helps to remember them if they can stand alone, rather than always being based around a human. Often they have kind of human shape, like arms and legs, but they're just of themselves so they don't become all blurred together.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Does it seem weird to you that you're giving inanimate objects human characteristics?

SIMON BASHER: That's one of the fun bits of it, I think. There's a real sort of fun in bringing the elements to life, and I think kids really like that kind of idea. When you're younger, you often imbue inanimate objects with life.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Every book comes with a poster.

SIMON BASHER: Yes, and in the poster, we try not to double up on what we talked about in the book. The posters either bring a new idea to the subject, or have fun with it in some way. In Rocks & Minerals the Mohs scale is not really covered in the book, so that is what the poster features. With Music, I took all the characters from the book and set them up as a band onstage, showing how they would look if they were all together.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What other books are you working on?

SIMON BASHER: I've got another series of books called Go! Go! BoBo!, which is about a little boy that's always running too fast and sort of bumping into things. They deal with real basics like shapes, colors, and opposites. I've got a young son who's only three, so I wanted to do books that could fit with his age group. Next, I created books for the age three-to-five group—alphabet and numbers books—using the same characters and style but tailored to different age groups for a different kind of message.

Within the science and education books we've also got two levels. We've got the Basher Basics, which are the building blocks, such as introductory math and punctuation. Then there are the Science-Made-Easy books, which help learners progress.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please describe your book process.

SIMON BASHER: I set up the design and get all my color schemes for the book sorted. The copy is written and checked by the consultants and edited down into what's needed. Then I read through the copy and cross-reference it to images of the subject we're dealing with. I do a small pencil sketch just to get a sense of the shape and what I want to do, then I start working on it with the pen tablet and software.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you do when you get stuck?

SIMON BASHER: Luckily it doesn't happen that often. I think this is partly because the subjects are always really interesting. Often, as I'm illustrating, I'm learning like the reader would be learning, so I've got that excitement about it all the time.

If I do hit a bit of a wall, then I might speak to the writer and ask if they can find a little bit more personality. Or I just research a little deeper until I find something that gives me a first sense of what that subject is.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you like to tell teachers and librarians?

SIMON BASHER: I tell them that I think there are a lot of students out there who are interested in a certain subject, but maybe don't have an immediate and natural ability with it. What I've found is, it is about building confidence with the subject. If you've got confidence with it, then you'll be intrigued to go farther.

If you doubt yourself or don't have confidence with a subject, immediately you begin to retract and just think it's not for you. There is a lot of conservatism within science education, but on that introductory level it's really good to have a fun and visual side to it. It does seem to work.

TEACHINGBOOKS: When you talk to students, what do you like to tell them?

SIMON BASHER: I'm generally more interested to know what they thought about the books. I feel like you can do all the work you like on a subject and you can hope that the book is going to work, but until somebody looks at it, you don't really know. I am always interested to know what happens when the students pick it up. I ask, "What did they think about it?" "What did they feel about it?" "What do they like about it?"

TEACHINGBOOKS: Please talk about the importance of humor in your books.

SIMON BASHER: School subjects are serious in themselves, but that doesn't mean they can't have a little bit of fun or humor about them. We try to reflect that in the characters and in the colors. We reflect that in what they're doing—in the way they're posed and in the way they're interacting with the props around them. It all helps readers to remember the information. If you look back at a topic and think of it with a sense of humor or that enjoyment, I think it just lasts a lot longer in your mind.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What else would you like to share?

SIMON BASHER: The most important thing for me is to take that abstract concept and bring it to life and to help to make it solid in someone's mind in a really fun way. As long as we keep doing that, then we'll be successful with the books.

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