“The Lorax” by Dr Seuss, Dr Seuss Illustrator. 1971. Barnes and Noble.

I’ve chosen to examine Dr. Seuss’ book cover for “The Lorax” for this post. As is commonn for all art work for his stories, there is a constant mix of vibrant colors, sometimes colors that don’t seem like they would work well together but somehow they are aesthetically pleasing and not too harsh on the eyes.

The obvious stand-out colors are the yellow and pink that top the trees in this image, noting their importance to the storyline before the reader even opens the front page. Against the tiffany blue background, these two colors are intensified. The blue sky and green foreground have light saturation and interact in a way that allows neither color to overpower the other. There are multiple hues of yellow on the cover, in the tree top, tree base, and the Lorax’s mustache, thought the difference is infantismal. The colors are complementary in their interaction, composed of more than primary colors, and because they are all from different places on the color wheel the cover is not anagulous.