Penguin Paperback Design (Three Bands to the Marber Grid)

• Design the series, not the book: fix one template of bands, emblem and type positions, and let only the author, the title and, later, the picture change from title to title.
• Code each series with one flat colour plus white, and keep it for every title in that series (Penguin's code: orange for fiction, green for crime, dark blue for biography, cerise for travel, red for drama).
• Set author and title in one typeface in a white field, almost always a sans-serif: centred, evenly spaced Gill Sans for the banded cover; Standard or Helvetica ranged left beneath a rule for the 1960s grid, titles in lowercase after the initial capital (Modern Classics kept Eric Gill's serif Joanna until 1966).
• Put one small drawn emblem of your own in the same place on every cover (Penguin's was the penguin Edward Young sketched at London Zoo), and keep other ornament to a framed series name and the rules that divide the bands.
• When pictures come in, give them a fixed field and keep the type out of it: a central panel between the colour bands, or the lower two-thirds beneath the title strip, filled with a photograph, collage or drawing that sets the book's mood.

London: Allen Lane's Penguin Books, launched on 30 July 1935 with sixpenny paperbacks that took their size, type-only covers and colour-coding by genre from the Albatross Modern Continental Library (Hamburg, 1932), in a cover scheme by the 21-year-old Edward Young, Penguin's first production manager (other accounts call him the office junior), set in Gill Sans, Monotype's sans after Johnston's London Underground alphabet; reformed by Jan Tschichold (1947-49) and Hans Schmoller, then by art director Germano Facetti (from 1961) with Romek Marber's grid, until Facetti left in 1972

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Books (launch on 30 July 1935 at sixpence; the brand 'owed something to the short-lived Albatross imprint'; the '21-year-old office junior Edward Young'; three bands with Gill Sans in the central white panel and the 'Penguin Books' cartouche in the upper band; the full colour code; Lane resisting cover images for several years; Tschichold's 500 books, Composition Rules and 'medallion' classics; the vertical grid with Schmoller as the 1950s fiction standard; Facetti hired January 1961; the Marber grid; the end of the defining era when Facetti left in 1972; Popular Penguins, 2008)
2. Design Museum, 'Penguin Books', https://designmuseum.org/penguin-books (the office junior Young sent to sketch penguins at London Zoo and designer of the first ten covers; orange, green, blue genre colours; Tschichold's template and eight penguins; the vertical grid devised by Erik Ellegaard Frederiksen at Tschichold's behest, adopted after Schmoller modified it in 1951, its three vertical stripes leaving room for illustration; Facetti 1961-1972; it dates Facetti's commission to Marber to 1962, against 1961 in Poynor (Eye 53) and Nadel (Eye 57))
3. Rick Poynor, 'Penguin Crime', Eye no. 53, vol. 14, Autumn 2004, https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/penguin-crime-text-in-full (Marber's Standard, the banded title section with rules, an image over two-thirds of the space, the Sayers, Simenon and Father Brown covers, Facetti's correction crediting Marber)
4. Dan Nadel, review of Phil Baines, Penguin by Design, Eye no. 57 (2005), https://eyemagazine.com/review/article/no-frills-chronicle-of-a-publisher (Young, 'Penguin's first production manager', and his horizontal grid of 1935; Tschichold's 1948 reform with Gill Sans and improved letterspacing; Marber's 'more image-friendly grid' of 1961)
5. Jan Middendorp, review of Steve Hare and Phil Baines (eds), Penguin by Designers, Eye, Summer 2007, https://eyemagazine.com/review/article/from-the-typographic-to-the-visual (the Marber grid on crime, fiction and Pelican titles; Facetti's 'transition from the typographic to the visual')
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romek_Marber (Facetti's commission for Penguin Crime; the image just over two-thirds of the cover; three title bands ranged left; Facetti adopting it for the blue Pelicans and orange literature)
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germano_Facetti (phototypesetting, the Marber grid, offset litho and photography on Penguin covers; Standard and Helvetica in the same sizes and positions for author, title and series (unreferenced; Joanna on Modern Classics until 1966); Swiss influence; black Penguin Classics from 1963 (citation needed there); left Penguin in 1972)
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Tschichold (500 Penguin paperbacks, the Penguin Composition Rules, succeeded by Hans Schmoller)
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Young_(publisher) (born 17 November 1913; joined Penguin in 1935 as production manager; designed the cover scheme, devised the colour schemes with Lane and drew the original penguin logo)
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross_Books (founded in Hamburg in 1932; layout by Giovanni Mardersteig at 181 x 111 mm; colour-coded by genre; Allen Lane 'had adopted many of Albatross' ideas', including the standard size, covers with typography and logo but no illustrations, and colour coding by type of content; Albatross's own code differed: green for travel, orange for humour and satire)
11. Den Gulden Winckel 31 (1932), 'The Albatross', https://dbnl.org/tekst/_gul001193201_01/_gul001193201_01_0066.php (Albatross covers coloured by content: blue love stories, green travel, purple biography and history, yellow psychological stories and essays, red detective and adventure, orange humour and satire)
12. Publishing History, 'Albatross Modern Continental Library', https://www.publishinghistory.com/albatross-modern-continental-library.html (the series organised by Albatross Verlag in Hamburg in 1932)
13. Penguin, 'Penguin Modern Classics design, part 1', https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2017/penguin-modern-classics-design-part-1.html (Schmoller's first Modern Classics jackets in Eric Gill's Joanna; Facetti's October 1963 reset on the Marber grid, keeping the bluish-grey scheme; Schmoller persuading him to stay with Joanna; Joanna replaced by Helvetica in March 1966)
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Classics ('Black Classics': black covers with artwork appropriate to the topic and period of the work, after Facetti's arrival in 1961)
15. Claire Squires and Alec Spencer, 'Penguin celebrates its 80th birthday – and cashes in on its past', The Conversation, 25 February 2015, https://theconversation.com/penguin-celebrates-its-80th-birthday-and-cashes-in-on-its-past-37951 (in 1963 Facetti changed the Classics covers, against E. V. Rieu's wishes, to the 'Black Classics')
16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans (released by Monotype in 1928, based on Edward Johnston's 1916 Underground Alphabet; used on Penguin's covers from 1935)
17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_(typeface) (Eric Gill's serif on the old-style Renaissance model; used on the blue-grey Penguin Modern Classics in the 1960s before Helvetica)
18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akzidenz-Grotesk ('sometimes been sold as Standard in English-speaking countries')
19. University of Bristol Special Collections, Penguin Archive, https://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/special-collections/strengths/penguin/ (the Penguin collection from its first book, André Maurois's Ariel, 1935)
20. Victoria and Albert Museum, Abram Games, The Great Escape, Penguin cover, 1957-8, colour offset lithograph, O549298, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O549298/
21. Victoria and Albert Museum, Stephen Russ, proof for the Penguin Poets cover W. H. Auden, 1958, colour lithography and letterpress, O544782, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O544782/
22. Phil Baines, Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 (Allen Lane, 2005)

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