Interview with Classic Book Illustrators, MinaLima
I am thrilled to invite two special guests to our final book club discussion on The Beauty and the Beast! Welcome, Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima, talented artists behind the gorgeous edition of The Beauty of the Beast many of us read this month (in addition to several other beloved classics books), the entire graphic style of the Harry Potter films (including props such as Harry’s Hogwarts acceptance letter, The Daily Prophet, The Marauder’s Map, and more), and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios!
Mira and Eduardo are currently on the set of the next Fantastic Beasts movie and have generously taken time to spend with us here at An Enchanted Life to discuss how they so beautifully bring classic stories to life 💕
Meet Mira and Eduardo of MinaLima, the talented illustrators behind beloved classics!
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Welcome to An Enchanted Life, Mira and Eduardo! We adore your beautiful work and are thrilled to have you here with us today! Can you share a little bit about how you initially became interested in art and design?
Mira: I have very creative parents: my father is a painter and my mother is a jewellery designer so an interest in art and design was inevitable!
Eduardo: I don’t come from a creative family at all! But from a young age, I was drawing and painting as well as making paper craft objects! I was living in a small town in Brazil and Mira was here in London but we were both making cardboard post offices and shops, with everything to go with them like little labels, tickets and receipts!
This month, we read your stunning edition of The Beauty and the Beast. When it comes to illustrating books and creating interactive elements, what is your process like? Do you read the story first, then begin designing?
Eduardo: Every book is a big responsibility as they are all classic tales read and loved by generations of children. We start by reading the book and creating a ‘roadmap’ where we mark out all the things that jump out at us, from special moments to quirky happenings to interesting twists. We then decide whether these events would be best presented as large illustrations or spot illustrations, or interactive elements or fold-out features. We are limited to eight to ten interactives per book. It was important to us that our interpretation is different to all that has already been published. We love colour so you will notice that the pages are vivid and bright. We now have seven books in our collection; we have created the book covers in a similar design language so they can all sit together happily on a shelf.
Was there a particular element of The Beauty and the Beast you enjoyed working on most?
Mira: Designing books is a very technical process and it’s very easy to get lost in the detail. For example, we have to make sure that the colour illustrations and the interactives are evenly spread throughout the book, and the flow and number of pages are even. But amid all the technicalities, there is that big fun task: creating all the original illustrations! The Beauty & The Beast was our third book after Peter Pan and The Jungle Book so by this point we wanted to experiment by introducing new elements. For this book, we created double-page spread artworks for each new chapter – a design treatment we have returned to in later books. This is was also the first time we designed elaborate fully coloured drop caps, which for illustration and graphic design nerds like us, was special!
You are currently on the film set of the next Fantastic Beasts film – how exciting! How does your artistic process when designing graphic elements for film differ from illustrating beloved books?
Mira: We apply the same principles to our MinaLima Classics books that we would to our work on a film set. The ‘road map’ that Eduardo mentioned earlier is also created when reading the film script. The illustrations and the props in our books are all chosen to highlight specific points in a story and to drive that story forward. In the same way, the hero and the background props in films are also created to tell the story. We always stay loyal to the words, whether they are on a film script or in a fairytale. We knew how to make graphic props for films, so the challenge that we set ourselves was to create props for books. We wanted our books to be immersive experiences where the reader would enter another world in the same way that one would get pulled in when watching a film.
Do you have any advice for artists who are interested in pursuing your particular line of work?
Eduardo: We are an odd design duo – we are illustrators and book designers and graphic designers for films and shopkeepers! – we have somehow forged a role that doesn’t really traditionally exist. So our advice is always to try out lots of things to see what you like. Do work experience if you are able to; sometimes roles look exciting or glamorous from the outside but in reality are not what they seem. Build a strong, multi-dimensional portfolio. Be ready to work hard because it’s hard work. And have fun!
To keep up with Mira and Eduardo, you can visit them online and even step inside House of MinaLima, their inspiring store and gallery in London!
GIVEAWAY TIME!
enter to win a copy of The Beauty and the Beast SIGNED by Mira and Eduardo below!
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