Blast from the Past #251: "Vegetable Wheel" Hampshire Life cover

This is one of my favorites of the covers I did for Hampshire Life, and if memory serves it was one of my editor's favorite, too. I like it for the drawing, which I think came out well, but also for the fact that it was one of those rare times when the art was meant to be USED.



This was intended not only as a cover illustration, but as the front of a practical "wheel"-type guide for planting and harvesting vegetables. The black rectangles in the drawing, labeled "Type of Vegetable", "Time to Plant" and so on, were meant to be windows through which the appropriate information could be shown. The second part of the "wheel", containing that information positioned so it would appear behind the correct window, was printed inside Hampshire Life, as were the directions for making the "wheel". (Those were basically to mount the two pages on two sheets of stiff cardboard, then cut them out -- including the windows -- and join them together in the center with a paper fastener. In the printed version, I think a small dot was added in the exact center to make assembly easier. Note the small indent on the right hand side -- this was meant to be cut out, along the dotted line, so as to make turning the wheel with the instructions on it a bit easier.)

I've always wondered how many people actually put this thing together. -- PL