The very modern Modern Stories

Simple ingredients create a modernist effect Penguin Modern Stories was a quarterly series published from 1969 to 1972 presenting short…

Adventures in Retro Design

In 2007-8 Penguin released a series of classic adventure novels from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Released as Red Classics…

John Curtis was a bridge

How cover design was freed from monotonous typography This handsome cover, designed by John Curtis, gets a lot of impact…

English Journeys

Historic journeys in England and Englishness English Journeys is a series of twenty elegantly designed paperbacks that celebrate the English…

The Australian Sun rises

How Australia’s Sun Books started in the 1960s Sun Books was a new Australian paperback enterprise that was launched in…

The radical Sixties Specials

Dramatic covers for a radical decade. In the early 1960s a series of political crises filled the front pages: apartheid…

The First Years of Pan

The vivid covers of Penguin’s biggest competitor What was Penguin’s main competition in the British paperback market during the so-called…

R.I.P Romek Marber

On March 30, Romek Marber died at the great age of 94. He had a long and admired career in…

Penguin’s Grunge Essentials

Penguin’s design renaissance In 1998, Penguin awoke from decades of slumber to regain its reputation for good cover design. One…

Hard Edge Penguins

     Covers by Germano Facetti, 1972 and Martin Bassett, 1973 In the 1960s and 70s, Pelican books, Penguin’s non-fiction arm,…

Art and the Modern Classics

In the 1960s, Penguin art director Germano Facetti revised the cover design for Penguin Modern Classics. He wanted a bold,…