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 J2EE Design Patterns is a mollusk. Oysters, squid, and snails all belong to this group of invertebrates (phylum Mollusca), which can be found in streams and oceans as well as on land. There are herbivorous, carnivorous, scavenging, and parasitic mollusks. Most possess a mantle, a layer of tissue that protects the animal's gills or lungs, and often produces a calcareous shell. They have a powerful, muscular foot section that they use for moving around.

Aquatic mollusks breathe through gills, and filter water for their food, which includes plankton and other single-cell plants and animals. Scientists have found that filter-feeding mollusks can serve as a benchmark of the degree of pollution in a body of water. The contaminants are a health hazard to the mollusks, and also to the people who may eat them.

There are three main classes of mollusks: the bivalves, the gastropods, and the cephalopods. The bivalve class is made up of mollusks with two hinged shells, such as oysters, clams, and scallops. Snails and slugs are members of the largest class of mollusks, the gastropods, which includes over 40,000 species. Gastropods often have a single, spiral-shaped shell, although some species have none. Cephalopods usually do not have shells; this group includes octopus and squid. The shells of mollusks are strong and enduring, and provide a meaningful fossil record of these creatures. Colleen Gorman was the production editor and the copyeditor for J2EE Design Patterns. Marlowe Shaeffer was the proofreader, and Jane Ellin and Darren Kelly provided quality control. Julie Hawks 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 by Julie Hawks 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 Colleen Gorman.