Under Cover: The Color Wizard

In 1988, Byron Preiss collaborated with Bank Street College to produced a children’s book series, Bank Street Ready-to-Read, to be published by Bantam Little Rooster. The series had three levels: Level 1 (Blue), Getting Ready to Read; Level 2 (Red), Reading Together; and Level 3 (Yellow), I Can Read It Myself. The Color Wizard, one of the first books in the series, was written by Barbara Brenner and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. I was responsible for the design. 

I do not have the color comprehensives of the proposed cover designs. So, what I’ve done is to place two of the proposed panel designs over a printed cover. Byron showed the design to Bantam, which gave its tentative approval. A short time later, Byron informed me that Bantam rejected the design. The panel was dropped altogether.

Rejected cover design

Rejected cover design

For the revised cover design, a designer at Bantam came up with the “bullseye” flanked by “Bank Street” and “Ready-to-Read”; Byron called it “the propeller”. Each level was in a colored capsule, which he called “the hot dog”. The font was ITC Souvenir. The Color Wizard title, based on LetraSet Glastonbury, was hand-lettered, in outline, by the Dillons. The credits were set in the font ITC Korinna.

Front cover design

The first page of the book with art

picked up from the interior art.

Title page with art
from the last story page

First page with text

The Dillons produced a sample spread with hand-lettered text, but the lettering was rejected. Two sample spreads were made with fonts from the ITC Benguiat Gothic and ITC Korinna families.

Photocopy of sample art with hand-lettered text

Photocopy of sample art with ITC Benguiat Gothic text

The art was ink on watercolor paper, but before the colors were added, photostats were made of the line art. Byron planned to produce a coloring book version but it never happened.

Photostat of original line art

Printed original art with ITC Korinna text

One by one, primary colors are added

Secondary and other colors appeared

Rainbow of colors

On the last page, evening at the wizard’s home,

followed by a note by the Dillons

Back cover

The thirty-two page book had twenty-six pages of art. In July 1989, the book was published in paper-over-board and trade paper editions.

 

Further Viewing

YouTube, The Color Wizard

 

 

(Next Monday: Dan X. Solo)

Under Cover: Harlan Ellison

The Baronet Uniform Library of Harlan Ellison's Works was a mass-market paperback series to be published in Spring 1980 by Baronet Publishing under its Baronet Books imprint. Baronet was the original publisher of Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, and the Byron Preiss produced books, The Illustrated Roger Zelazny, The Illustrated Harlan Ellison and Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Cover dummies were made of the first two volumes, The Glass Teat and Paingod and Other Delusions. The fonts ITC Machine and Helvetica Black were used on the dummies. 

I was the designer of the Ellison series. The publisher was Norman Goldfind, who was, at one time, the publisher at Pyramid Books, which published eleven Ellison books in a uniform series designed and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. The Baronet edition would reuse the Dillons artwork. If you see the Paingod original art hanging on someone’s wall, please call the FBI because it was stolen from the Baronet office.

I hand-lettered “Harlan Ellison” in a stylized script. I don’t have the sketches but you can see the some of the penciling on the bristol board. At the inking stage, the outline of the letters and shadows were the same weight. I stopped, looked at the outline and thought the weight should be different. I considered painting over the shadow outline but the surface would be uneven and might affect the inking. So, I decided to start over. All of the inking was done with Rapidograph pens and an assortment of ellipse templates, a French curve and a flexible curve. White gouache was used for corrections.

The ITC Benguiat font family was used on the cover and spine. For the front cover title I used Fat Face. The pricing information was set in the Futura Condensed family.

Baronet went out of business before the books were published. Harlan Jay Ellison was born May 27, 1934.

Update: Harlan Ellison announced, on Art Deco Dining Pavilion, that Leo Dillon passed away on Saturday, May 26.

(New post on Monday: Central Substation)