Give Us Our Flowers is a zine that highlights and celebrates revolutionary Queer POC. The zine uses two types faces. For the headings a decorative and unique typeface and a sans serif for the body copy and image captions. A unique, creative and inspiring feel is created through the headings which is complemented by the simple body copy for readability. The headings are larger, in all uppercase and in various colours establishing them at the top of the textual hierarchy. Some elements of the body copy are italicised and/or in another colour to create emphasis. The zine shows effective and creative use of a four column grid to organise and align the body copy as well as highlight pull quotes or image captions. This is a good example of effective grid use to generate consistency but also retain movement and dynamics. 

Don’t Just Do It is a zine on the topic of consumerism, focusing on the problems faced by designers and solutions for these issues. Typographically, this zine is very simple but shows effective hierarchy. It uses a sans serif typeface with the headings bold, in all uppercase and very large. The slug and folios are smaller in size, in normal case and a medium line weight. The body copy is the smallest on the page and in a normal weight. The zine uses a three column grid for most pages and a two column grid for the last couple of spreads. The grid system is used dynamically with some hyphenated headings to fit the grid and some headings breaking and spreading across the grid. This zine is a good example of a variety of spread layouts to create interest but still maintaining consistency through the use of the grid system. The zine also uses two colours (black and pale yellow) on top of white card stock. The simple colour palette allows for the layout to stand out and be showcased as the main design element.

Typozine is a good example of utilising tints and shades within a limited colour palette. The zine uses purple and blue printed on white card stock. Various tints of these two colours are used to highlight certain elements in different sections and create variation in the backgrounds of spreads. A variety of typefaces are used and explored in the headings but a sans serif is used consistently in the body copy. A four column grid is used with the majority of the body copy spreading over two columns. The four columns are used to highlight some pull quotes in these large paragraphs. Overall, the zine feels a little cluttered with a wide range of layouts used. 

Bélanger, R. (2021, September 19). Typozine | Issue 01. Behance. https://www.behance.net/gallery/127230359/Typozine-Issue-01

Maitland, L. (2021, February 25). Don’t Just Do It Zine. Behance. https://www.behance.net/gallery/114036127/Dont-Just-Do-It-Zine

Schneider, Z. (2021, September 24). Give Us Our Flowers. Behance. https://www.behance.net/gallery/128005999/Give-Us-Our-Flowers

For my zine, I aim to explore the history and development of Penguin book covers. To me, Penguin book covers are an iconic piece of design that contain a sense of nostalgia. There is a level of excitement and satisfaction of collecting and reading classic stories set between the orange Penguin covers. I want to explore the development of this design from the original designer, the typeface, the layout and grid system and composition rules. In terms of visual style I hope to keep it minimal (like the book covers) but also dynamic and visually creative to play on the nostalgic feel. I aim employ a variety of layouts while maintaining consistency with an overall grid system.  

A Typographic Exploration of Penguin Books

Caitlin Turner n10750649

Penguin’s beginnings 

Allen Lane

1935

Edward Young was a junior editor who was chosen by Allen Lane to design the logo for the newly established Penguin Books. Young developed the penguin logo that has now become a symbol of both the company and affordable and accessible high quality books.

Young also designed and developed the instantly recognisable paperback covers that we associate with Penguin Books still today. He created a simple horizontal grid format where the title, author and genre were printed in between two coloured stripes that wrapped around the back of the book.

This simple design established a uniform look and branding for Penguin Books that made them easy to distinguish from other volumes on the shelf. Also aligning with the cheap and accessible ethos established by Lane. 

Through this design, Young shows the benefits of a grid system through achieving visual consistency and balance across all Penguin Books.

Horizontal grid

Edward Young

Gill Sans 

At this stage the covers featured two typefaces. Bodoni Ultra Bold for the Penguin Books signifier at the top of the covers and two weights of Gill Sans for all other textual elements (bold and regular). Uppercase was used for all text on the covers.

The humanist and geometric Gill Sans adds to the simplicity and minimalism of the cover design. Whereas, the more traditional serif Bodoni emulates quality and professionalism. The combination of these typefaces aligns with Penguin's brand image and ethos. 

Bodoni

Edward Young developed the colour coding system used for Penguin Books. The cover contained two horizontal coloured stripes that indicated the genre of the book.  This colour system epitomises the simplicity and accessibility of Penguin’s ethos. 

Orange: General Fiction

Green: Crime Fiction

Pink: Travel and Adventure

Red: Drama

Blue: Biographies

Purple: Essays

Gray World Affairs

Yellow: Everything else

Penguin used the orange colour to develop their branding. The iconic orange spine is instantly recognisable on any bookshelf today providing a perfect example of effective and distinctive branding. 

A shift in design

Jan Tschichold 

1940s

Jan Tschichold was given the role of creative director of Penguin Books in the 1940s and aimed to implement a consistent look across all books no matter the print foundry. Tschichold established a set of composition rules that stressed white space and clear typographical hierarchy, refining and building off of Young’s design. 

Tschichold removed Bodoni Ultra Bold and exclusively used Gill Sans. More care and attention was given to the kerning and tracking of the text. The spacing and sizing was refined for more white space and a horizontal rule was added for distinction between the title and author.

This attention to detail and subtle changes resulted in a more balanced design that emphasises the simplicity and minimalism that encompasses Penguin Books as a brand.

Out with the old

Edward Young 

In with the new

Jan Tschichold

Composition Rules 

Jan Tschichold’s composition rules establish strict guidelines that govern the design and layout of all Penguin books. The rules cover a range of design elements from text composition to punctuation to footnotes. The following is a small extract from the Penguin Composition Rules (1947). 

Text Composition 

All text composition should be as closely word-spaced as possible.

Wide spaces should be strictly avoided. Words may be freely broken whenever necessary to avoid wide spacing, as breaking words is less harmful to the appearance of the page than too much space between words.

All major punctuation marks – full point, colon, and semicolon – should be followed by the same spacing as is used throughout the rest of the line.

Indenting of paragraphs

The indent of the paragraph should be the em of the fount body.

Omit indents in the first line of the first paragraph of any text and at the beginning of a new section that comes under a subheading. It is not necessary to set the first word in small capitals, but if this is done for any reason, the word should be letter-spaced in the same way as the running title.

As a rule, the spacing should be about a middle space or the thickness of an ‘i’ in the type size used. 

Punctuation marks and spelling 

If this can be done on the keyboard, put thin spaces before question marks, exclamation marks, colons, and semicolons.

Use single quotes for a first quotation and double quotes for quotations within quotations. If there is still another quotation within the second, return to single quotes. Punctuation belonging to a quotation comes within the quotes, otherwise outside.

Capitals, small capitals, and italics 

Words in capitals must always be letter-spaced. The spacing of the capitals in lines of importance should be very carefully optically equalized. The word spaces in lines either of capitals or small capitals should not exceed an en quad.

Use small capitals for running headlines and in contents pages. They must always be slightly letter-spaced to make words legible.

Running headlines, unless otherwise stated, should consist of the title of the book on the left-hand page, and the contents of the chapter on the right.

Folios 

These should, as a rule, be set in the same size and face as the text, and in Arabic numerals.

Pagination should begin with the first leaf in the book, but the first folio actually appearing is that on the verso of the first page of the text.

Italics are to be used for emphasis, for foreign words and phrases, and for the titles of books, newspapers, and plays which appear in the text. 

Bookshelf

Even today, Penguin books are instantly recognisable on any
bookshelf. They are a stand out and iconic piece of design that
demonstrate the effectiveness of consistency and simplicity. The shift between Young and Tschichold’s showcases the importance of effective typographical hierarchy and the importance of white space. It shows that even simplistic designs require plenty of planning and the importance of utilising theory to create well balanced designs.

It feels as though no bookshelf is complete without at least one orange spine peaking through the other volumes. They hold a sense of nostalgia and professionalism and still uphold Allen Lane’s original ethos of cheap accessibility. Penguin book covers will forever be an iconic and inspiring piece of design.

A zine exploring the history and design evolution of the iconic orange penguin book cover. Learn how the distinctive and instantly recognisable piece of design came to be and let the nostalgia wash over you. 

I predominantly used Gill Sans throughout the zine with a few exceptions where I used Bodoni. Penguin Books currently exclusively uses Gill Sans for their book covers. The humanist and geometric typeface is clean and simple allowing for easy readability and direct alignment with Penguin Book's ethos. I chose to use Gill Sans to remain consistent with Penguin's branding and to ensure the minimal design style was achieved. I used Bodoni for a few elements to indicate its use in initial book cover designs. By almost exclusively using Gill Sans the placement of the Bodoni elements were contrasted and highlighted making showing the shift in design eras more striking. 

The two colours chosen were black and the iconic Penguin Book orange printed on an off-white stock. I decided to not include any tints or tones of the chosen colours to remain consistent with the simple block colour system developed and used by Penguin Books. I chose an off-white stock to give the design a slightly aged feel as I wanted to portray the nostalgic feeling associated with Penguin Book covers. 

I used a variety of techniques to establish clear hierarchy in the zine. Gill Sans has a large range of typestyles to utilise for establishing hierarchy but I chose to only use bold and normal to ensure clear contrast and distinction (Dabner et al., 2017). For headings I used Gill Sans bold, all uppercase with fairly wide tracking. This remains consistent with the typographic design of the Penguin book titles. Subheadings were set in Gill Sans normal and at a smaller size. The body copy was set at the smallest size (apart from the folios). This hierarchy was kept consistent through the zine with some differences based on page content. For example, the subheadings on the composition rules spread are set in Gill Sans bold and small capitals. This is to demonstrate the use of small capitals as stated in the Tschichold excerpt. Hierarchy was especially important for this spread due to the wealth of information so small discrepancies are easy to notice (Bringhurst, 2004). 

To maintain consistency and uniformity throughout the spreads I used a four column grid system (Rolo, 2018). This grid helped organise content in a neat and minimal manner to adhere to the minimal design style I was after. The grid also allowed for more creative and dynamic spreads such as the typeface and colour spread to remain structured and consistent with the rest of the zine. 

The use of a grid was crucial to align my zine with the simple but structured design of Penguin Books established by Edward Young and refined by Jan Tschichold. 

I initially chose to use left justify for the body text in the zine to ensure minimalism and neatness. However, this resulted in large and inconsistent spacing between words and made the design feel too structured. Changing to left align made the pages feel more organic and dynamic, not only increasing readability but adding movement to the spreads. 

Overall, I believe that I effectively captured the design style and feel of Penguin Book covers in my zine. I feel as though I balanced creativity and minimalism to achieve a dynamic and nostalgic reading experience while maintaining the Penguin Books ethos. If time permitted I would experiment with more dynamic and visually interesting layouts to increase add more excitement to the reading experience. Perhaps experimenting with the geometric nature of Gill Sans to create interesting visuals would enhance the typographic exploration of the zine. However, I believe that I have effectively explored the design of Penguin Book covers in a way that matches the brand identity. 

Bringhurst, R. (2004). Shaping the page. In The elements of typographic style (3rd ed., pp. 143-178). Hartley & Marks.

Dabner, D., Stewart, S., Vickress, A., & Zempol, E. (2017). Graphic design school: A foundation course for graphic designers working in print, moving image and digital media (6th ed.). Thames & Hudson.

Decor Books. (2019, May 1). Penguin classics. The story behind THAT iconic cover. https://decorbooks.co.uk/uncategorized/penguin-classics-the-story-behind-that-iconic-cover/

Gosney, L. (2013, March 20). A brief history.. Penguin book covers. Design Context. https://e-gosney1215-dc.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-brief-history-inspiration.html

Graphéine, T. (2018, June 14). A short history of book covers - 3/4 - Graphéine. Graphéine - Agence de communication Paris Lyon. https://www.grapheine.com/en/history-of-graphic-design/history-of-book-covers-3

Hamilton, F. (2017, October 19). Penguin book covers (1935). Medium. https://medium.com/fgd1-the-archive/penguin-book-covers-1935-2dedc8be641

Kohlstedt, K. (2019, July 25). Classic penguins: How minimalist book covers sold the masses on paperbacks. 99% Invisible. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/classic-penguins-how-minimalist-book-covers-sold-paperbacks-to-the-masses/

Mockups Design. (2021, July 8). Floating A4 brochure mockup. https://mockups-design.com/floating-a4-brochure-mockup/

Rolo, E. (2018). The typographic grid in the editorial project: An essential resource to the graphic consistency and perception. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 61-72. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96059-3_7

Tschichold, J. (1947). Jan Tschichold: Penguin composition rules. Penn State - Information Technology - Courses Server. https://www.courses.psu.edu/art/art101_jxm22/tschichold.html