If there is a Harry Potter ‘look’, it is the one created by MinaLima, the design and illustration team responsible for the graphic work of the Warner Brothers film adaptations (the Marauder’s Map!), the first two of the three Fantastic Beasts screenplays and the first three volumes of the illustrated edition of the seven Hogwarts saga novels. Studio MinaLima announced on August 5th via Instagram that they have Goblet of Fire Volume of this series.
Scholastic confirmed this shortly afterwards via the Rowling Library’s Instagram platform:
Judging by the reactions to this news on Instagram, collectors and fans of the series and MinaLima’s artwork are not at all happy with this decision. I scrolled down the initial reactions to the Rowling Library’s release of this news and the reactions were consistently one of disappointment, even disgust towards Scholastic.
Why the change? The answer is almost certainly “money.” Either MinaLima was charging more than Scholastic was willing to pay, or the books they designed were becoming too expensive to produce, i.e. “too close to the maximum price limit that readers will pay, thereby reducing profit on each sale,” or Scholastic simply chose a much less costly partner for this endeavor. As they have done in another series –
The third Fantastic Beasts The script was designed for Scholastic by Paul Kepple and Alex Bruce at Headcase Design in Philadelphia. It looks quite different from the MinaLima scripts by Fantastic Beasts And Grindelwald’s Crimes (the pages of the script were much less decorated and uniform in illustration style), the work of Headcase Design on The Secrets of Dumbledore included many more images, artifact renderings, and character sketches. Read about Kepple in Redefining Our Reading Habits: 5 Incredible Book Projects from Headcase Design. He seems to be a man on a mission to save the traditional codex version of books from the murderous Kindle and e-book villain who wants to take them off life support.
I do not own any of the illustrated MinaLima Harry Potter editions. The only book they have compiled that I own is The Fall of the Beastsa book that looks like Newt Scamander’s suitcase (briefcase?). It cost $45 new in 2016, which would be over $60 today. I suspect that Headcase Design is a Goblet of Fire Proposal to Scholastic that was also crazy enough to win fans of MinaLima, at lower production costs and a smaller advance for Kepple and Company.
It’s bizarre that Scholastic is releasing two illustrated versions of the series at the same time, the one started by Jim Kay for Bloomsbury, which Scholastic is publishing as “The Illustrated Edition,” and the one started with MinaLima, which they call “The MinaLima Edition,” or at least they did until last week’s announcement. It differs from the Kay series mainly in its “interactive” elements (fold-outs, etc.).
Kay left the first season for health reasons, but Neil Packer helped him to Phoenix Illustrations. This series will certainly continue. If Kessle’s Headcase Design team can deliver both illustrations and “interactive paper elements” for less money and lower production costs than MinaLima, Scholastic can keep the promise they made to The Rowling Library to finish this series as well.
I understand the disappointment of fans and collectors over the change in the design team of the “illustrated interactive” series. I also understand that Bloomsbury and Scholastic are less accountable to those customers than to their shareholders. I confess that today I am almost grateful that I do not have the money to buy expensive editions of books I already have; I know I would lament another “broken set” in my lifetime. potter collection if I did. I hope I’m right in my assumption that Scholastic has a qualified alternative to MinaLima right behind the scenes and that Headcase Design or whoever plans to take over will delight fans and collectors alike.
