The imprint
Where the look comes from
Nothing in Dawnchild's look was invented. The emblem, the colours and the thing we sell all come out of the first book, and the system is built to carry every book after it.
The emblem: from a 1926 title page to a spine
The colours: sampled, not chosen
- Olive#b9ab60 · the garden, and the ground of this site
- Parchment#d4c29c · the title panel, and our panels
- Ink#0b0e06 · her line, and all our type
- Russet#7c4a2b · the tree, and the Buy buttons
- Ochre#a07f3d · the leaves, a spine colour
- Dark olive#4b4025 · the shadows, and the other buttons
The product: the pictures
A retailer's page shows a cover and a price. Ours shows the plates, because the plates are what you are buying. A reprint that drops the plates or shrinks them is a different book; where one of our formats prints them in black and white, it says so beside the price. Every Dawnchild page puts the pictures first, at full width, with the line from the story they belong to.
That is the whole argument of the imprint.
A list, not an author
The list began with one family and will not end there. The same spine, the same foot, the same paper carry every book, whoever wrote it and whoever drew it: Beryl Irving's fairy adventure, her household book, a cookbook from the Singapore camps, and next Florence Harrison's Elfin Song. The spines are built to carry that.
DawnchildDawnchildDawnchildDawnchildEach title takes one colour from the palette for its spine and cloth. Title and author change; the foot never moves. Elfin Song is in preparation.
What the rules are
- The running figure is on every spine, at the same height, whatever the width.
- One serif, Caslon, for the imprint's own words. Each book's cover may use a face of its own period.
- One colour per book, from the six above. Never two.
- Type is ink, or parchment reversed out of a dark colour. Never a colour on a colour.
- Cream paper and one page size for the whole list, so the books stand together.
What they are for
So that a Dawnchild book is recognised at the foot of a spine in a shop, at thumbnail size on a screen, and on a shelf beside its neighbours, by the same small figure every time. The pictures inside will be different in every book. The frame around them will not.
Everything else about Dawnchild is in the About page.