a common reader

Penguin by Design
A Cover Story 1935-2005

Phil Baines

taal: Engels
gepubliceerd door: Penguin
eerste editie:
gedrukt: 2005
verworven: 2005
bindwijze: gebonden
isbn: 0713998393
verworven via: Amazon

What a beautiful book!
Phil Baines wrote a highly documented history of cover design in the 70 year existence of Penguin pockets. To some extend it is even a history of graphic design as a profession.
It is endearing to see prints of the earliest Penguins. The earliest one I have is the 1956 edition of CS Forester’s The African Queen. The design is misleadingly simple: the cover layout was fixed for the series by Hans Schmoller based on preliminary work by Jan Tschichold and Erik Ellegaard Frederiksen. The same vertical grid is used in the 1961 edition of CP Snow’s The Conscience of the Rich. This vertical grid was recently (2004) reused for the special edition of Orwell’s Why I write.
Poetry has always had a special treatment: compare the 1970 edition of The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse with for instance Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro of the same year. Even in 1971, when colour publishing was no exception anymore, books were still printed in the low colour graphical style: or Lowry’s Hear us O Lord from Heaven thy dwelling place. What a difference already in 1978: four colour printing for Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.
This book is a must for everyone who is interested in graphic design. It is a delight to browse the book and look at the 500 covers!
Related book: Front Cover by Alan Powers.