Dear gang, Thanks for all the responses; I'll look at them closely. Still no internet at home so I worked out a couple of things earlier before getting to my email. Some problems are solved, others remain. In particular, the key, backgroundcolor=<color>, appears to be broken. Here is the relevant code for my cover: ========================= %\setupoutput[pdftex] % \definepapersize[journal][width=5.5in, height=8.5in] \setuppapersize[journal][letter] \setuplayout[top=2cm,marking=on] % \setuppagenumber[state=stop] \def\ALAVIband{\midaligned{ | \vbox{\hsize=7cm | \setupcolors[state=start] | \setupbackground[ | foregroundcolor=darkgreen, | backgroundcolor=darkyellow | ] | \startbackground | \hbox{}\vskip14pt | \midaligned{\tfa THE ALAVI FOUNDATION} | \stopbackground | } | } | } \setuptoptexts[\ALAVIband] \defineoverlay[backgr][{\externalfigure[mbor-026.eps]}] \setupbackgrounds[page][leftedge][background=backgr,backgroundcolor=darkgreen] \starttext \input tufte \stoptext ========================= Problems: 1. For the def. of \ALAVIband, the key, backgroundcolor=darkyellow, does not work; I still get grey. 2. For overlay I want to something different for the front and back cover; in the above example they are combined. Overlaying an eps appears to work as expected. But overlaying the entire page in some color does not work at all. Again, the key, backgroundcolor=darkyellow, does not work; 3. Is there a way to precisely make the top of the \ALAVIband flush with the top edge of the paper? If you change \hsize in the \vbox to 15cm, you will see that the grey band is just higher than the crop marks. Thanks to all for their kind help. Best Idris