Published on November 05, 2005

On its 70th birthday, the book publisher puts on a grand show on how its logos and cover designs have evolved over the decades. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Or so the adage goes, but in the frenzied world of book publishing, alluring covers, many of which can be considered fine pieces of art, are a definite requirement.

No less significant than the writer’s name or content, the cover design can often make or break a potential reader’s decision to buy. Cover images also convey something about the content - you can see right away if Harry Potter is an underdog or if Michael Moore’s having a laugh at Dubya’s expense.

As Britain’s first mass-market book publisher, Penguin spent the last seven decades creating covers that encourage readers to appreciate what’s between them, and is now celebrating the occasion with “70 Years of Penguin Design” at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, which runs until Tuesday.

Founded by brothers Allen, John and Richard Lane in 1935, Penguin takes pride in its cover designs, which, together with good quality and low prices, helped ensure the company’s success.

With the dawn of the computer age, most illustrations can be done on the screen and full-colour is the norm. Special eye-catching effects can be added after printing. Laminates, whether gloss or matt, are often employed to protect the covers of reference books. Spot varnishes highlight elements of the design, while debossing, often with metallic foil, tries to catch the discerning eye in a competitive market.

But what happened at a time when these techniques were either too expensive or unavailable? The Penguin exhibition shows how the company managed to maintain a cost-effective production system while using the graphic styles and devices of the day to attract the book-buying public.

At the core of Penguin’s identity is its logo, which has undergone many makeovers in its 70 years. Edward Young drew several versions of the first penguin, including skinny ones for the spines. There were also adaptations for the company’s imprints - Puffin, Pelican and King Penguin.

When Jan Tschichold took charge of typography and production in 1947, he rationalised every aspect of the company’s graphic design. To ensure consistency, the logos were produced as a typographic “character”. As a result, Tschichold’s Penguin remained the definitive logo until Pentagram gave it a subtle facelift in 2003.

Colour coding is another distinctive feature of Penguin.

In the early days, when the company was more interested in building its own image, the covers were dominated by horizontal stripes and bold typography. The covers were also colour-coded. Orange stood for fiction and green for crime. Orange was on front covers until the mid-1960s and on the spines until the late 1990s.

Brown stood for Greek translations and roundels, either specially drawn or traced from photographs. In fact, the publication of Greek classics in 1946 was a bold step. That year, Allen Lane published the first Penguin Classic, Homer’s “Odyssey”, ignoring warnings that the market could not support another version. But it was Penguin’s best-selling book, until “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” in 1960, and still remains in print.

Apart from Penguin’s colours, Pelican was also given a distinctive blue. Pelican, Penguin’s “serious” imprint, was the first to commission books, beginning with George Bernard Shaw’s “The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism”, “Bolshevism” and “Capitalism and Fascism” in 1937. The early covers followed the format of the main series, but used the Gill Sans typeface for the words “Pelican Books”.

The Pelican blue also represented the Specials series created to meet tight deadlines. Penguin Specials dealt with topics of urgent social and political concern in an era before investigative journalism or current affairs television.

Although Penguin acquired the reputation of having a left-wing bias, these titles reveal an attempt to maintain a balance between the various shades of opinion.

As trends changed, Penguin began introducing new designs.

A vertical-striped layout design by Tschichold was adopted from 1951 for the orange series. It allowed illustrations to be neatly integrated. But as tastes in illustration changed, Penguin adapted the “Marber Grid”, originally commissioned for crime titles by Germano Facetti, the cover-art director. Romek Marber was one of Penguin’s designers and his grid had type arranged within rules above an area set aside for illustration. The image, often darker and more suggestive than the literal ones used for the other series, increasingly featured photography from the 1960s.

Photographs and collages were introduced around 1959 by marketing manager John Curtis. Strict “series” colour distinctions seemed less important in the 1960s, so when Alan Aldridge became fiction art director in 1965, the Marber grid was discontinued. The front cover was freed of any formal restraints, a trend that has lasted until today.

Penguin recently published 70 books as “Pocket Penguins” to celebrate its 70 years. These titles are in the smaller format of the first 10 books of 1935.

The covers, by 70 designers working in a myriad of styles, showcase the best of contemporary design and illustration, but also include classic examples by designers from Penguin’s past, such as Aldridge, Derek Birdsall and Marber.

“70 Years of Penguin Design” is on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London, until Tuesday. It’s open from 10am to 5.45pm daily.

For more information, look up www.vam.ac.uk.

Manote Tripathi

The Nation

London

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