The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart (William Morrow)
From Herb Lubalin Study Center:
Book jacket designed by Lawrence Ratzkin. Ratzkin graduated from The Cooper Union in 1951. He was a prominent graphic designer noted for his cunning design solutions honed down to their graphic essence. He produced thousands of book jackets for the major American publishing houses.
Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills is the second in a five-part series of fantasy novels about the Arthurian Legends, which was started with The Crystal Cave in 1970. First published in the United Kingdom by Hodder & Stoughton in 1973, this is the first American edition by William Morrow. Ratzkin used Hermann Zapf’s Optima and crayoned in the spaces between and inside the letters in alternating colors, highlighting the relationship between positive and negative forms.
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In the resources for his holistic approach to teaching handwriting, the late Hans Eduard Meier included exercises that look similar to Ratzkin’s jacket design. They are designed to train the children’s eyes and teach them that the shapes of the interletter spaces are just as important as those of the letters themselves. For balanced spacing, the gaps must have approximately the same surface area (while the distances themselves are variable).