Pulp Red sets the weight of the palette in urgency and appetite, and Night Blue is the swatch that breaks rank: a single blue that stops the set reading as one note. Pulp Red and Sunset Orange are close enough in hue and lightness that most people will read them as one colour, which makes them a pair to separate rather than two choices to spend. Ink Black and Canary Yellow sit 56 points of lightness apart, enough to separate a foreground from a background without forcing it.
Pulp Red reads as pure adrenaline: alarm, desire, the color of things that move fast.
Sunset Orange a citrus-bright orange: enthusiasm, playfulness, an unmistakable call to attention.
Canary Yellow a citrus-bright orange: enthusiasm, playfulness, an unmistakable call to attention.
Night Blue is the most trusted color in color psychology: competence, stability, calm, used constantly by institutions that need to be believed.
Ink Black a deep oxblood or garnet, red aged into authority rather than warning.
Painted covers made to sell in a second: a figure in danger or desire, a lurid sky, fat title type and a painter's hand in every fold, from the pulps and paperbacks of the 1930s to 1950s
Explore the full Pulp Cover style guide