Norwescon 2 Program Book cover

This cover from the Norwescon 2 Program Book has an interesting story behind it.

The illustration by Bill Warren depicts a scene from "The Wind Whales of Ishmael" by Norwescon 2's Guest of Honor, Philip Jose Farmer. But the most interesting part is why we printed a low-contrast smudgy blob on the front cover of the program book.

Bill spent days working on this painting. He had read in somewhere that by using some combination of Pantone Process Blue and something-or-other red on somekindayellow paper, he could achieve the look of 4-color offset printing with a 2-color process.

I found Bill working at his easel at the Crackerbox Palace, wearing a pair of 3D glasses with different color filters in the lenses. He was meticulously creating the color separations by hand. He also had glasses for each of the colors so that he could watch his progress as he painted each of the overlapping images.

Looking at the paintings, I was dubious; but what the heck, we're overdue for getting the book to the printer and Bill was the artist so he must know how this works, right?

So, no worries! Everything is going just fine!

Or not. The program book went to the printing press and came back as you see it, way too late to do anything else.

Lesson learned: Don't use untested technologies on mission-critical processes.

(Text by Gregory Bennett)