Marber Grid System

To further my research I created the Marber grid on the Penguin book jacket template using InDesign. This allowed me to experiment with a few aspects of design such as single colour and composition etc.  

In 1961, Penguin's Art Director commissioned a grid for mystery novels from Romek Marber. According to Baines, "its use for fiction was successful only when strong images were commissioned, and far less so when illustrations from the previous decade's vertical grid were re-used. Nonetheless, this grid was the basis of hundreds of covers, and its influence could be felt even after strict adherence to Marber's original grid ended.

This is a great example of a specific grid in action in commercial production. The book shows many examples of how the grid was used. We get to see the types of grids that came before it and how subsequent grids were (or were not) influenced by it. The article is brief, but it is at the core of the book and probably its single most distilled/illustrative piece.

History of "The Marber Grid"

By the dawn of the Sixties, the books published by Penguin were looking tired and dated. They were a great design ten years prior, but printing technology (and book design) was getting more and more sophisticated, buyers were passing over Penguin books because they looked dated. Something was needed to make them look exciting again to the public.

Romek Marber had been designing for The Economist and had impressed Penguin’s art director Germano Facetti, and so Marber was one of three designers (alongside fellow designers Derek Birdsall and John Sewell) tasked with a proposal to redesign the book covers.

Samples of Romek Marber’s covers for The Economist, often done on a short schedule, and always limited to two colours of ink (limited colour palette).

Marber also had the opportunity to design a few covers for Penguin before the grid proposal.

The crime series from Penguin was a very popular series, and Marber wanted to be sure audiences could still identify the books after the redesign. Hence, he kept the green colour, but lightened it. The three lines in the top third were meant to also remind customers of the old design, while looking more modern. Most of the space was kept clear to allow for imagery.

The first several dozen of the series also featured artwork designed by Marber, and were very interesting for how the worked within the constraints of the medium, and used creative imagery to reflect the mood of the books.

Over time, the design was so successful it was expanded into other lines published by Penguin. It has gone on to become one of the most famous grid designs of all time.

Experiments using the 'Marber Grid.'

Single colour collage experiment works well as a neutral colour that could be used across the series. However. the colour does not create the strongest impact I want the series to portray perhaps I need a greater contrast between the colour relationship and palette used?

Enlarged and cropped image experimentation. By enlarging the image i created and photographed using a collage technique, I was able to create an interesting composition. This composition is interesting mainly due to it's monochromatic style with only a few aspects of colour to highlight the type on the book cover. Monochrome works extremely well due to the high contrast. Although the placement of text needs altered slightly. Although the dark background and light contrasting text works well as a series because it not only creates interest but also works to link the genres of each book I have selected for the series.