Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005

For those with an interest in Design,Book publishing and the impact of Penguin on the world book market this is a gem of a book.The book charts the covers from the early iconic design with its bold horizontal bars through to the present day high impact covers and everything in between.Baines is enormously knowledegable about design and typography and makes the subject very interesting and accesible.He also places Penguin in the historic context of the whole printing revolution largely brought about by Penguins impact on book buying in the Twentieth Century.Well worth the purchase.

Penguin books have a rather illustrious heritage, with legendary typographer Jan Tschichold responsible for the iconic orange spines, three-pane covers with Gill Sans, and of course serious attention to detail in the typesetting.

Phil Baines takes us through the seventy years of history in the design of Penguin paperback covers, a constantly evolving part of Britain's culture and design history. The book is lavishly illustrated, with many full size covers, and goes into detail of individual titles. Fascinating too is the coverage of changing role of artists and designers throughout Penguin's history. It's a luscious book for anyone interested in typographical-related design.

The book is published in Penguin's Allen Lane range and as such is finely typeset in Adobe Sabon (a digital incarnation of Tschichold's typeface). I mention this because the Penguin paperback novels are all too obviously machine-set nowadays, a sad loss introduced when Penguin's type design department was disbanded in 2003.