DESCRIPTION Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks Book CLIENT Lyons Press DATE Spring 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Cover: Bret Kerr Interior: Sheryl Kober PRINT CREDITS Lyons Press Manufacturing Director: Kevin Lynch Printer: Brady Palmer TYPE CREDITS Trade Gothic

QUANTITY PRODUCED 15,000 PRODUCTION TIME 1 month + DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 6.125 in × 9.125 in × .825 in PAGE COUNT 320 PRINT METHOD Offset and foil stamp PAPER STOCK 100 Lb. C1S VACUMET Metallized paper NUMBER OF COLORS CMYK VARNISHES Spot gloss BINDING Perfect binding

With influences that span the work of John Gall, Paul Sahre and Paula Scher, Bret Kerr set out to evoke the sprit of fantasy and gaming while avoiding clichés, and providing geeky references for its core audience. The following reveals just a little of the mystery of production for mass market books.

I originally wanted to do an all type cover with one possible small photo inset. So I started the project in Illustrator and focused on the typography. The title is very catchy so I wanted to explore ways of highlighting the words. The cover was originally designed without knowing for sure if the budget would allow printing on metallic paper, so the design had to work either way—the cover shows a vintage photo of the author when he was a teen. The author was a big part in working out details of the cover so that we would not hit any false notes within the gaming community. For example, a week before press time we had to have some 20-sided dies over-nighted so that we could shoot them for the cover. I had an 8-sided die in place, but later found out that any serious gamer would respond more to rolling a “natural 20”.

Once printing on metallic paper stock was approved, the printer (who has lots of experience printing on metallic) advised me to create a white plate that would mask out the metallic paper in the right places and at the right percent. I also changed the spine from having metallic text to having white text so that it would pop more on the iridescent leather background. We also were able to foil stamp the title on the cover of the book (under the jacket), something we usually reserve for the spine. Some of the other details had nothing to do with production, but with pure geekery such as picking headband colors of maroon and gold as a nod to Harry Potter fans.