Penguin Book Covers & Jan Tschichold

I researched Penguin Book Covers for inspiration of already successful existing book covers. Penguin covers seem to have the approach of a consistent layout but generally a reduced visual layout.

History of Penguin Book Covers 

In 1935, Allen Lane founded Penguin Books, during this time paperback books were largely associated as poor quality, However, Lane proved determined to bring back high quality paperback fiction back to the market. Therefore he set out with a deliberately low price of six pence per book making profit seem highly unlikely. Although despite resistance from the traditional book trade Woolworths ordered 63,000 books revealing there was an aufience for these books. 

The Original Penguin Book Covers 

Design has always been of key importance to the success of the Penguin brand. During the set up of the company, Lane wanted to find a symbol that was both dignified but flippant in order to represent his ethos. Then Lane's secretary suggested a penguin so his office junior, Edward Young was sent to London Zoo. His sketches from his trip to the Zoo formed the first version of the Penguin logo. Although the logo has been through several adjustments since the penguin still remains the logo even today. 

The initial Penguin designs opted for a simplistic look, Lane himself resisted a move towards cover images for years. The design featured three simple horizontal bands, the top and bottom bands were colour coded to represent the series the book belonged to. 

Orange was used to identify general fiction, green for crime fiction, cerise for travel and adventure, red for plays, dark blue for biographies and yellow for miscellaneous. Some that were less common can include violet for essays and grey for world affairs.

In 1947, German Typographer Jan Tschichold joined Penguin and defined the simplistic design further. He was very suited to this task as in 1923, Tschichold converted to Modernist design principles after visiting the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus's ideology called for design to be deconstructed into radical more simplistic forms focusing on rationality and functionality. Tschichold released his typography manifesto 'Die Neue Typographie' in 1927, in this he condemned all typefaces apart from sans-serif. 

Within his manifesto, Tschichold insisted on the international and deliberate use of white space. 

"White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background." 

- Jan Tschichold 

Therefore developments began to take shape on Penguin Book Cover's after Jan's manifesto Tschichold altered and tightened up the design. 

Tschichold laid out many other Modernist design rules such as the use of structured typographical hierarchy – most notably the use of different sizes and weights of type to quickly and easily convey information.

Penguin covers before and after Tschichold’s subtle yet effective tweaks 

Clearly Tschichold’s own design preferences aligned with those of Penguin. During his time with the company, Tschichold further refined the cover designs – redesigning more than 500 Penguin books – and left the company with a set of influential design principles.

These were brought together as the Penguin Composition Rules, a four-page booklet of typographic instructions for editors and compositors.