As a grade schooler I’d often smuggle to school a copy of the current mini Legos or Star Wars toy catalog, providing something to distract me from the day with my favorite things.  Harry Potter fans have it better today.  Now Insight Editions has a new take-anywhere volume for anyone needing their Harry Potter fix anytime, The Art of Harry Potter–Mini Book of Graphic Design.  Available at $11.99 or less, it’s an inexpensive source for the visual details of the movies you didn’t get to see on the big screen.  The images were there, only barely seen on book covers, wrappers, newspapers, signs, and all sorts of paper ephemera that were on the desks, in the backpacks, and on the shelves, those thousands of items that needed to be created by designers to make J.K. Rowling’s books come to life.

In a small package you get more than 50 pages of book cover art and about 20 pages each of potion art, magazines and newspapers, Hogwarts documents, Ministry of Magic documents, maps, heraldry, Quidditch signage, food labels, Beasleys’ joke shop product labels, wanted posters, and other signage, all in full color.  At 304 pages you might expect a giant book of images.  But you’ll be surprised at what can be minimized into a 2.5 x 3.5-inch hardcover pocket-sized book that’s slightly less than an inch thick.  Prior to smart phones readers might have balked at a book with images and type font so small.  Now readers regularly read the equivalent of font sizes of 5 or smaller without thinking about it.  So the adjustment for the eyes for this new line of books in this format isn’t that bad.

Here is an 18-page preview of The Art of Harry Potter — Mini Book of Graphic Design courtesy of Insight Editions:

For fans of Harry Potter who like to make their own replica props, the book offers plenty of opportunities with things like potion labels, which could be (gasp!) scissor-cut out of the book for those so-inclined.  Just keep in mind most of the images are much smaller than actual size.

The content is great, including hundreds of quality images, with many images we’ve not seen published in previous behind-the-scenes books from the series.  Harry Potter fans looking for the latest in obscure collectibles, this book is for you.  We’ve reviewed several books going behind the scenes in the Potterverse, a dozen just over the past two years, and they each have something new to share with fans.

Compiled by Marc Sumerak and Rick Barba, The Art of Harry Potter–Mini Book of Graphic Design is available now here at Amazon.