Mark Boulton

When Emma and I were in Perth, more spe­cific­ally Fre­mantle, on a ‘find a pair of decent flip-flops’ mis­sion, we happened upon a small second-hand book store. Nor­mally, I tend to walk past second hand book shops (as they’re usu­ally crammed full of Mills and Boon’s), but some­thing caught my eye with this one. Shelves and shelves of second hand Pen­guin books dat­ing back to the 1940’s. I couldn’t resist.

For those who atten­ded the panel I was on at South By South West this year, Tra­di­tional Design and New Tech­no­logy, you may recall me men­tion­ing a book on the his­tory of Pen­guin Book cover design, called Pen­guin By Design by Phil Baines. It’s a won­der­ful book, and cur­rently selling for a little over a ten­ner, I’d say it’s a must for any graphic designer. Any­way, back to the book store… 

Emma was very patient (as usual!), as I cooed over the vari­ous designs and then decided on my three pur­chases. I could have bought a lot more, but as it was we were both over weight with our bag­gage and Brit­ish Air­ways are harsh when it comes to over­weight bags. 

In the end, I settled on three books to begin my collection: 

The hori­zontal grid

The first book sports the clas­sic Pen­guin cover design which first appeared in 1935. The design was cre­ated by Edward Young, who became the company’s first Pro­duc­tion Man­ager. Young devised a sys­tem of col­ours to indic­ate sub­ject mat­ter — orange for fic­tion, green for crime, dark blue for bio­graphy, pink for travel and adven­ture and red for plays. These aspects of the design, as Baines points out, far out­las­ted this design. 

Hori­zontal grid designed by Edward Young in 1935. A design classic.

I’m sure you’ll agree, the typo­graphy is indic­at­ive of the period and the use of Gill Sans, as I wrote a while ago, gives the Pen­guin books a quintasen­tially Brit­ish feel.

It was a bonus that the shop happened to have a copy of ‘Of Mice and Men’, one of my favour­ite short stories. 

Redesigned Pel­ic­ans

This book belonged, I think, to my wife’s grand­father (although it may be my mother-in-law’s), but in any case it’s a clas­sic. Not only the sub­ject, which if you live in Wales like myself, even today is a good start into under­stand­ing the rich cul­ture of this nation, but the design is a classic. 

Redesigned Pel­ican cover. Designed in 1949 by Jan Tschichold.

Begun in 1949 by Jan Tschich­old, the cover design was a depar­ture from the hori­zontal grid. As shown here the cent­ral panel was nor­mally purely typo­graphic, but some­times there would be the odd wood­cut illus­tra­tion. For me, what defines these early Pel­ican books is the col­our. The Teal, white and black col­our­way (although work­ing under huge budget and tech­nical con­straints), work incred­ibly well and stand the test of time. 

The Marber Grid, 1962

These are beau­ti­ful book cov­ers, and appar­ently quite rare when com­pared to the other books. Maybe it’s some­thing about Perth’s isol­a­tion which meant that these books were kept out of the hands of col­lect­ors, but I was lucky enough to pick a couple up (there were only about half a dozen of each in the shop com­pared to hun­dreds of the other designs). 

I really couldn’t res­ist these. Beau­ti­ful grid design, typo­graphy and illus­tra­tion. (Apo­lo­gies for the flash)

The Marber grid was designed in 1962 by Romek Marber after being com­mis­sioned by Pen­guin. He went on to design over sev­enty covers. 

The col­our­ways devised by Young in the 40’s were retained by Marber (although slightly tweaked). Shown here is a green crime book and a blue biography. 

The typo­graphy and grid are per­haps the most strik­ing of these designs. Marber used Inter­type Stand­ard (a ver­sion of Akz­idenz Grotesk) for all the typo­graphy as it offered more flex­ib­il­ity in terms of weights com­pared to typefaces such as Hel­vetica. The Swiss influ­ence in the design in inter­est­ing. I feel, although they are beau­ti­ful cov­ers, that the Pen­guin books of this time lost their ‘Brit­ish­ness’. A move over to a more European design aes­thetic would obvi­ously help sales into the Eurpoean mar­ket. How­ever, I can’t help feel­ing that some of the Pen­guin brand was lost in the translation. 

The begin­ning of a rather sad hobby?

It would be very tempt­ing to get more of these books. The design is simply stun­ning in most Pen­guin books from the early 40’s right through until the 70’s. I’d like more, but to be hon­est I just don’t have the room. Maybe I should clear out the shed.