Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a companion to the Harry Potter books. It purports to be Harry’s copy of the book, and contains a variety of annotations and doodles ‘written’ by him, Ron and Hermione. The annotations are handwritten - a normal typeface really wouldn't work for this sort of feature.
As this is a textbook, not all of the additions are relevant to the text...
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| Note the different handwriting used for Harry, Hermione and Ron |
This is the first annotated page in the book – right at the start! These annotations are a good way to include Harry, Hermione and Ron in the book without writing them into the text where they don’t belong.
Here, Harry and Ron treat the imprint page with roughly as much respect as any teenaged boy would. There’s lots of empty space – so fill it up with games and other graffiti. From a design perspective, this is a good way to add interest to the imprint page (which readers would likely otherwise find as exciting as did Harry and Ron) and give some insight into the characters’ personalities and behaviour.
This annotation is a reference to an event in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where Snape claims the Kappa is more commonly found in Mongolia. The connection to the main series is an Easter Egg for keen fans, and also allows Rowling to correct what may have been an unintentional error in Snape’s lesson.
There are not annotations or graffiti on every page, only every other page, and it often consists only of a few words (or a circle around the word ‘bum’, in one case). This keeps the annotations from taking over the main text, as they do in The Selected Works of TS Spivet. All in all, this design element is used well and adds to reader interest in and enjoyment of the text.
Samples collected: 15 May 2012
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