Penguin Classics - Design

Design

Penguin Books has paid particular attention to the design of its books since recruiting German typographer Jan Tschichold in 1947. The early minimalist designs were modernised by Italian art director Germano Facetti, who joined Penguin in 1961. The new classics were known as "Black Classics" for their black covers, which also featured artwork appropriate to the topic and period of the work. This design was later revised to have pale yellow covers with a black spine, colour-coded with a small mark to indicate language and period (red for English, purple for ancient Latin and Greek, yellow for medieval and continental European, and green for other languages).

In 2002, Penguin announced it was redesigning its entire catalogue. The redesign restored the black cover, adding a white stripe and orange lettering. The text page design was also overhauled to follow a more closely prescribed template, allowing for faster copyediting and typesetting, but reducing the options for individual design variations suggested by a text's structure or historical context (for example, in the choice of text typeface). Prior to 2002, the text page typography of each book in the Classics series had been overseen by a team of in-house designers; this department was closed in 2003 as part of the production costs rationalisation of the Classics list, and any design work is now done by editors and outside suppliers.

Within the broader category of Classics, Penguin has issued specialised series with their own designs. These include:

• Penguin Nature Classics, with authors such as Rachel Carson, John Muir, and John James Audubon
• Penguin Modern Classics, with authors such as Antoine de Saint Exupéry, James Joyce, and Truman Capote
• Penguin 20th Century Classics
• Penguin English Library
• Penguin Enriched Classics, such as Pride and Prejudice, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Scarlet Letter, and A Tale of Two Cities