Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of Learning C# is a goldfish. Goldfish are freshwater fish popular in aquariums and ponds. Though they are native to China, goldfish are one of the most common household pets all over the world. They were first domesticated centuries ago when it was discovered that carp, which are usually olive-colored, can have color mutations causing some of their scales to be red or gold. These mutated fish were bred to create many different varieties of goldfish, including the oranda, ryukin, lionhead, pearlscale, telescoped eye, and bubble eye types.

Most commercial goldfish are scaled and have metallic red, gold, white, silver, or black sheens. But the more rare "scaleless" fish have transparent scales, making them appear bright red, blue, purple, or calico-patterned. Though the wild carp from which goldfish are bred can measure up to 16 inches in length, most commercial goldfish are between 1 and 4 inches long.

Darren Kelly was the production editor, Catherine Morris was the copyeditor, and Sheryl Avruch was the proofreader for Learning C#. Tatiana Apandi Diaz and Claire Cloutier provided quality control. Interior composition was done by Philip Dangler and Genevieve d'Entremont. Angela Howard wrote the index.

Hanna Dyer designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the Dover Pictorial Archive. Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand 9 and Adobe Photoshop 6. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Linley Dolby.

The online edition of this book was created by the Safari production group (John Chodacki, Becki Maisch, and Madeleine Newell) using a set of Frame-to-XML conversion and cleanup tools written and maintained by Erik Ray, Benn Salter, John Chodacki, and Jeff Liggett.