Spotlight: Entertainment Packaging

Subtle Use of Metallic Spot Color Lets the Face of "Dream" Emerge from Shadow on "Sandman" Cover

The eerie cover of "The Sandman: King of Dreams" emulates and reflects the dark, creepy feeling of some of the fantastical comic images inside. Published by Chronicle Books and designed by San Francisco's Character design firm, the book is a compilation of the art from the "Sandman" comic series.

The cover image is an iconic illustration of the Sandman's central character, Dream, by artist Mike Dringenberg. The illustration is an eyeless, stylized sketch of the young character. On the book jacket and case, Dream's shadowy figure is shown ominously emerging from a darkened background. The paper jacket has an obvious contrast, but the hardcover case is very subtle and engaging.

Patricia Evangelista, a partner at Character, was the lead creative mind behind much of The Sandman, outside and in. Evangelista decided the hardcover might be more distinctive and memorable with only two colors, a black with a subtle sheen and a dark plum metallic spot color. With this combination, the image of the Dream character has a eerie and dynamic dimension.

Evangelista decided that playing two closely-hued cover colors off each other could create a dramatic effect as light reflected off it from different angles. "The face will pop up, like it's coming out of the shadows," Evangelista now happily observes of her creation.

Neil Gaiman revolutionized the comic-book medium with The Sandman, the most acclaimed and award-winning comic series of the last decade, "The Sandman" is a rich blend of modern myth and dark fantasy, in which contemporary fiction, historical drama and legend are seamlessly interwoven.

"What was fun about it was the process," Evangelista remembers. The images in the collection were ancient-looking, and the Character team tried to create a new book that would appear ancient. "We wanted to add an element, with the pages being really worn, like the book was sitting on someone's shelf for a long time," says Evangelista.

The art from the comic series is haunting (and haunted), layered, macabre, and darkly beautiful. To highlight and enhance the moody nature of the art, the designers at Character collected various found items themselves to use in the book. The Character designers collected old picture frames, cracked glass and stained wood, then photographed these items for divider pages, front matter, and title pages. Hand drawn type, ripped pieces of paper, masking tape—seemingly forgotten relics from an artist's collection—are all featured as design details.

For the main textural element used on interior pages of the book, a sheet of old paper was scanned from the backside of one of Gaiman's letters to his editor. The grid itself is intentionally designed so that the text columns are tensely close to the outer margins of the book. Every design element and decision was based on the concept of combining picture and text as one physical object. None of these inventive approaches required any extra production costs, however. Character is a small but versatile firm that also received much recognition recently for their Pottery Barn Kids and Kohler package redesigns.