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One of my earliest memories of the impact of design in our lives was the cover illustration for the novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling which would quickly become my favorite book, and continue to be a favorite series of mine into adulthood. This was before Harry Potter had become as popular as it shortly would become and so I had never heard of this novel before, but the stylized cover illustrations by Mary GrandPré immediately caught my eye as I browsed through the shelves of my local bookstore. A boy on a broomstick straining to catch a tiny winged golden ball. A great castle in the background with a giant three-headed dog hiding menacingly beneath an archway. A beautiful, ethereal unicorn galloping across an open field with a great foreboding forest looming in the background. I remember turning the book over to see more of the illustration and being further intrigued by the image of the mysterious cloaked man with a long silver beard. All these images together had already given me a sense of what I would find in the world of this book: mystery, adventure, and magic. Already I was fascinated and I hadn’t even read the synopsis of the book that was printed on the inside flap of the cover, I hadn’t even read a single word about the book except for the title and the author’s name. I realized then the impact that the design of the cover art of a novel could have. The information it had to communicate to the consumer with nothing more than the title and imagery with which to convey the mood of the novel. It was amazing to me that in a single image the designer was able to communicate to me what I was going to find within the pages of this book.
