ent.

One of the most important parts of a book cover is the title, to which
the amateur and inexperienced designer does not always give sufficient
attention. The title must be clearly drawn and everything else in the
cover made subservient to it, so that the first thing the eye falls on
is the title. For this reason a thorough study of lettering is
necessary for the successful cover designer, and much practice in
order to become proficient. A very successful cover may be due simply
to a well-selected cloth with lettering properly drawn and placed so
that the eye is perfectly satisfied and the whole has an air of
distinction. Each designer grows insensibly into his or her own
particular style, which those who are interested in book covers grow
to know; but the more varied his style the more in demand will be the
designer.

The designing of book covers is a minor art, but since there is a
constant demand for ornamented covers, the more taste and skill that
can be devoted to the making of them, the better. When one looks back
to the covers of fifteen years ago, one realizes what an advance has
been made, and that the standard has been raised higher and higher,
until at the present time many a famous illustrator or decorative
painter occasionally turns his or her hand to the designing of book
covers.

THE COVER STAMPS

By George Becker.

Not many years ago the crudest and most primitive devices were used in
the production of a book cover. The artist, if such he could be
called, who was responsible for the design, seldom went to the trouble
of furnishing the engraver with anything more than a pencil sketch,
which the latter transferred to a brass plate about one-quarter of an
inch thick by coating the plate with beeswax and laying the sketch on
it, face downward. When the paper was removed the beeswax retained the
marks of the lead pencil. He then began the tedious process of
outlining it by hand with a graver and afterward finished it with a
chisel.

But the exacting demands of modern artistic taste, the improvement of
scientific methods and the pressure of competition have marked a
complete transformation in the business of making dies for book
covers. A few pencils and gravers, a vise bench, and a grindstone no
longer make an engraving establishment. Colored sketches of most
painstaking execution, accompanied by a working drawing in black and
white, have taken the place of the old pencil sketch. These ar