Harry Potter arrives at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after passing through an ephemeral portal at platform nine and three-quarters, King's Cross Station, London.
But the magic begins for David Saylor '81 at 555 Broadway, New York City, a short walk from the local IRT stop.
Saylor is art director for the U.S. editions of the Harry Potter books, published by an imprint of Scholastic Press. He used to have a perfectly normal working life.
Now, "besides being a hero to my 9-year-old nephew," he spends an inordinate amount of time responding to requests related to the Potter phenomenon.
Last fall, the first three books in the planned series of seven by author J.K. Rowling held the three top spots on The New York Times list of bestsellers. Printers worked 24 hours a day to churn out millions of copies of the books, which have been embraced by children but also are popular among adults.
Grown-ups can even buy special British paperback editions with different jacket art if they prefer to be a bit surreptitious about reading works that are all the rage among a preteen set.
Others are wild about Harry in a less sanguine way. More attempts were made to remove or restrict the Potter books at libraries and schools than any other books in the nation during 1999, according to a database compiled by the American Library Association. Opponents often cite the series' emphasis on wizardry and sorcery.
The books recount the adventures of a young wizard-in-training, orphaned by his parents' deaths at the hand of the unspeakably evil You-Know-Who. Appallingly mistreated by his aunt and uncle, who raise him after his parents' deaths, Potter accomplishes heroic deeds while attending Hogwarts, an English boarding school, with other aspiring wizards and witches. Eleven years old in the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's Stone in Britain), he ages a year with each succeeding tale.
The task of Saylor, vice president and creative director of the book group at Scholastic Press, was to present the story in a format befitting the imaginative, mystical plot. "Basically I'm responsible for the look and design of the whole book," he says, "from hiring the artist to working with a designer on everything from the typography and the kind of paper to the colors for the endpaper and the cloth everything that contributes to the way the book looks."
The U.S. editions feature jacket art and illustrations by a different artist, Mary GrandPré, from the versions published originally in Britain, where author Rowling lives, and there are other significant variations.
"Jo Rowling has said that the U.S. editions are her favorite" among the variety of versions published in more than two dozen languages around the world, says Saylor. "When I met her after the first one came out, she said it looked exactly as she had hoped, giving the impression of a book of spells."
The editions Saylor worked on contain chapter-opening drawings, which are not a part of the British versions. Saylor also accentuated page numbers and chapter folios with tiny stars. GrandPré's artwork, he says, "is a mix of the fantastical and magical," and is ideally suited to the stories.
The distinctive appearance of the U.S. editions "has become sort of famous," Saylor notes. He was impressed when a recent Mad magazine parody of the books imitated the look precisely. "That's kind of when you know you've hit it big," he says, laughing.
Saylor, a history major at Pomona, had no crystal ball foretelling his impending career while an undergraduate, although "I took an art history class that I loved," he says. He later became interested in graphic art and attended the Parsons School of Design at the New School for Social Research, now New School University, in New York.
"My classes in history and English at Pomona have proven to be a great background for the things I work on" in book publishing at Scholastic, Saylor says.
Although the celebrity attendant to his involvement in the Potter series has taken up a great deal of time, says Saylor, "So far, it has all been very positive. I've gotten lots of attention and am being asked to speak a lot more, and have certainly gotten my name out there in the design field, which is just great."
The books' popularity has not surprised him. "They're just incredibly exciting to read," Saylor says. But he did not expect the notoriety. The series has drawn objections from individuals and groups, primarily conservative Christians but from other quarters as well, concerned about the centrality of the occult in the themes, as well as the stories' frank references to violence and death.
Saylor believes some critics are mischaracterizing the books' fanciful, mostly frivolous renditions of the dark arts or are basing their opposition on the reports of others. He says the books have great value, not merely in inducing tens of millions of children to read, but also in conveying a message. The distinctions drawn between the good and evil characters are unmistakable in the series.
Saylor says he is pleased to have had a significant role in publishing the books and to be admired by youngsters such as his nephew, who, like many other Potter fans, has read each of the books several times and eagerly awaits the next one.
"I guess what I'm most proud of is that some people have said the books really look beautiful, besides being such great stories to read," he says. "It's enormously satisfying that people have said they like the aesthetic part of reading the books, and I'm glad that my design and the look of the books can contribute to their being treasured. It's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing."
--Michael Balchunas
