Synergy Text

Throughout the creation of my practical project I have taken inspiration from what I learnt about Penguin and its history. I found that Penguin’s most popular series/collections were made with consistent cover layouts that used grids; in order to achieve this I used the Marber Ratio grid that I analysed within my essay to help place my title and author making it easy to read. I also kept my spine, back and front layouts the same leaving them easy to recognise as a collection. I also did a lot of research into how Penguin used colour within their designs to help connote certain feelings and stories. This helped inform how I could use colour to symbolise certain aspects of the books’ storylines while making the colours visually work well together. Another part of my essay looked into how Penguin modernise their classic designs by using current designers and looking into the cultural values and audience at the time. When looking at my audience and current time I see us now in 2017/18 as being in the era of technological advancements and that generations are using phones and tablets more than ever before. But even with this knowledge I did not create an ebook design or something digital as I researched into the statistics of how Penguin are still able to have raising printed sales whereas their ebooks sales are on a decrease and this is due to their successful designs that can only be achieved through a print platform. All of this knowledge helped me to be influenced by technology in my designs therefore visually being more appealing to the audience. To conclude, my practical work would not have been as successful if it hadn’t have been informed by my essay and research into Penguin as a brand and its successes.

Overall Outcomes

Looking into my Final Collection designs I am pleased within the overall theme and constituency. My idea of having a collection made up of one story is unique and I feel would work well within the book community encouraging the audience to want to collected and read more. I feel it was important within my designs to have the penguin image on the side link the books together as it is visually appealing to make the collection work as one while on a shelf. I took inspiration from previous successful collections from Penguin designers but I choose to create a series with a more strict audience and purpose which was I bring a essence of Technology to classic WW2 book. Therefore bring in a new audience to the Penguin brand. Through my essay I learnt that it is important to have the knowledge of what is modern and hone in on the cultural values of the audience like Penguin has done in the past. 

Printing decisions

Spending a lot of time in bookshops I found that people tend to pick up books they are not even interested in just to feel them and run there fingers over the different textures and levels. Therefore I wanted my designs to feel more tactile. Due to my subtle hint to technology within my designs I wanted to enhance the theme with touch. The lighter colour on my covers which is the boarders, lines and background numbers, would be raised and in a shiney stock to separate it from the other darker colours. The rest of the design will be lower and a matt shock. 

When putting my designs together I feel like the gradual colour changes works well and I really like the mix of blues and reds within my designs. Putting the designs in a flat layout helps me to better see how my front, back and spine covers work together.

I showed my designs to a 13 year old who is not a big fan of reading and she said,

'I love the colours of the covers, I am drawn to the big numbers because it helps me know what order to read the books, I don't usually take notice of who made the books but I cant help but look at the penguin on the cover.'

Even getting only a small amount of feedback from a younger audience at this stage helped because I was able to see that I was successfully promoting Penguin as a brand helping them to be more noticed by the upcoming generations rather than just the older generations.

Illustrations

After I had many peoples feedback that I should include illustration to my design I decided it was a good way to show what was in each chapter but also to represent key characters. This means people who haven't read the story will be intrigued by the images and want to understand them however people who have read it will have the knowledge and understand the link to the narrative and story. The illustrations also make the covers look less flat by overlapping certain parts making the images appear to be coming out of the 'Phone screen' style background. The style of my images are hand drawn in with white strokes. This is due to a part of the story that the main character spends a lot of time writing in white chalk, these drawings give the effect that the main character has drawn them. This gives the audience more of a link to the characters.

When creating my illustrations it took some trial and error. I kept getting constant feedback from others of wether all of my illustrations fit together as a set and wether they were easy understandable. I had to change some of my designs to keep a more constituent line width to make them look better as a collection and these where my final choices.

Don't Judge a New Cover by the Old Book

I found an article while researching that I found very interesting it was written by Jen Doll in 2013 where she interviewed Penguin designers about why it is important to re-design old classics.
It talks about how classics have been around for so long there is bound to be many covers creating to keep them up to date.

My favourite book designer Coralie Bickford Smith is quoted saying 

"I truly admire some of the iconic covers from the past for certain classic pieces of literature, but from a selfish point of view as a designer of books, if the original cover had stuck, I would have never have got to design covers for such a incredible bunch of historic authors."

"If I don't understand and immerse myself in the content how can I communicate the insides on the outside in a way that will speak to an audience?

I highly agree with this as I feel it can be hard to be able to design for a book without knowing the content as how can you best promote the story inside. Its like trying to sell a house that you've never seen inside of.

Another of my favourite designers was also featured in the essay, Paul Buckley. 
He was quoted to have said

 'We are here to represent the book, to get readers excited about the book, and to sell it — and we have a split-second to catch your eye as it scans the crowded bookstore. Hence the cover must stand out with distinction, the copy should be readable, and the overall effect should be enticing. This is true for every book, regardless of genre.'

I am talking about one of each of their classic collections within my essay as I feel they both have cleverly modernised classics to stand out on modern day bookshelves. 

Paul Buckley Drop Cap series

Coralie Bickford Smiths Cloth Bound Classics

Spine Development

 When I began designing the spines I went with a normal layout of book title and author facing to the left featuring the number of the book and penguin logo on each. When I placed the spines together as  if they were sitting on a shelf I liked the gradient and how they flowed well together however I did not like the repetitiveness. It made it look busy and unnecessary having the same information multiple times together. I began experimenting with having the text just once but only readable when the books are all together. It worked better but still didn't look as interesting as I wanted therefore I thought I should get some feedback from other designers. After discussing my problem they felt it was not important to include the title or author on the spines as that information is really only necessary on the cover. I decided that since the covers are promoting the story and what is in the chapters so the spines can promote the series as a collection. Therefore my final spine design when all put together shows the penguin logo and spells out generation. This leaves a more simplistic look but also symbolic promoting penguin as a brand. It is also fun as when the spines are separate it leaves an abstract pattern that only forms the image when they are all together.

Initial Designs

To begin I used the Penguin Marber Ratio Grid which I found whilst writing my essay to create a basic text layout for the cover.  I liked the idea of using big numbers to show what number book it is in the series as with the consistency of the cover I found it would not be as obvious what order the books should go in. I didn't want to use many colours other than Blue and red within my designs to keep to my theme.

I felt that different variations of Gill Sans worked with my covers as a serif font would feel to traditional whereas the sans serif font relates more to technology and is know for being easy to read for all audiences and has been on the covers of Penguin books throughout its history.

I found a way of including a subtle link to technology within my cover through layout. On the cover there is a boarder which resemble an iPhone or iPad screen, along with the placement of the penguin logo to resemble a home button. I also found the layout of the text was similar to a lock screen time and date. this means the audiences eye would be drawn to the text as the eyes would be used to focusing on that area of a phone screen making it easy to read. On the back cover I used the antenna bands as seen on a iPhone 6 to place the text but more to follow though from the boarder on the front cover. Using the penguin logo on the back like the apple brand mark on a device it is a subtle way of promoting the brand. On the back I included the information of what number the book was in the series.

I decided on 'Penguin Generation Collection' as the name of the series as I wanted it to show that the collection is meaning to bring the attention of a younger generation by its use of the modernisation of the design by the influence of technology.

I had a critique with fellow designers and within this I gained some points of how to improve my design and what was successful about my idea.

• The technology element is subtle therefore it doesnt take away from the fact that the book is set in WW2.
• The constancy is good however there needs to be something shown on the covers that shows what is inside/represents the chapters included.
• The designs look quite flat is there a way of making them stand out more.
• Can I make the spines or cover join together in some way to make the collection even more satisfying to collect.
• Could I add some textures?

It was an overlying opinion that people thought it was a clever idea to have the collection made up of one book and to progress within my design I am going to look more into the illustrations.

Colour systems

There is a Penguin Classics Collection that I highly admire called the Drop Caps series designed by Paul Buckley. What I feel makes the collection so visually appealing is the colours used. It is made up of Vibrant colours that cover the covers, spines and pages of the books that produce a rainbow gradient designed to look amazing together on a shelf.

My Collections Colour selection

I wanted my colours to look visually appealing together but also relate to the story. I decided upon the gradient of blues and reds. Blues would symbolise the beautiful winter scenes that are described throughout the story and red would show the danger aspect of war and Natzi Germany.

Together the colours seem patriotic to Britain which symbolises how patriotic Britian were during WW2. When the books are in order the colours gradually get darker this shows how the story becomes more intense and emotional as time goes on. 

Practical Idea

The original reason I wanted to write about penguin and its covers was because I am fascinated by how penguin are able to have an audience that will buy a book with the same content numinous times just because the cover is different or it is part of a collection. My favourite Penguin book designer is Coralie Bickford Smith and she has created multiple Classic Collections including many different designs of the same books.

Within my practical I want to play on this by creating a collection of an already famous book. I am going to use my favourite book, The Book Thief.

I want to be ironic and play on the idea of a collection being a set of books that look nice together on a shelf that people collect by making the collection one book. Every book will include a few chapters of the story so in order to read the whole story you will need to buy the full collection. I feel this is a clever marketing tool that will also make the audience feel good as it looks visually pleasing to have a full collection on a shelf. 

Todays culture shows a raise in technology. Some people do not take the time to read because in their spare time they choose to use technology such as phones and tablets, I want to bring a hint of digital technology to my design so it is more similar to the audience giving an old WW2 story a modern day feel.

Extended Research

Penguins Colour Coding

Orange - Fiction
Green - Crime
Pink - Travel and Adventure
Red - Plays
Blue - Biography
Yellow - Miscellaneous

The use of colour is important in that it makes the audience have a certain emotional response. Looking into the symbolism and connotations of colour you can see why Penguin made these tactical decisions into the application of colour.

Red is know as a colour of intensity which is fitting to the strong emotion put across in plays. Red is also used within theatres for stage curtains and carpets etc.

The main colour of Penguin is Orange, this colour is known for many things such as warmth, enthusiasm, but also according to the colour wheel is the colour of success.

 

The Penguin Marber Grid was designed for Penguin covers in 1962 by Romek Barber. The grid showed that the top third of the covers should include text and the Bottom two thirds image. This was a big turning point for penguin as before this point the layouts would all focus highly on text rather than image. From the 70s to current day it is now unusual to see a cover which does not include some kind of image.

I want to use the grid within my cover designs to stay consistent.

Research into Penguin.

Sir Allen Lane began the Penguin Publishing Company in the 1930s. His idea was to be able to  publish luxurious books affordably. Edward Young was the designer who worked alongside lane in creating the original layouts, type choices and logo design.

Jan Tschichold also made a huge impact on Penguin Book Design and design in general bringing his way of looking at the design to the company in the 40s and 50s.


The Penguin logo itself has been redesigned numinous times with its last redesign being created by Angus Hyland from Pentagram.









What I would like to touch upon within my essay,

• Why did Penguin choose the specific colours in its original colour coded genres
• How did Penguin cater to its audiences (classes, Economic status) 
• How did Penguin create such successful layouts for its collections
• What different modernist changes did the covers make to keep them relevent?

Cop Considerations

I needed to get more of an idea on my theme and content before I started a plan so I decided to talk through my idea again but with Simon Jones who had not yet heard it.

• Why do the covers have appeal

I need to look more at penguin as a company and what they stand for. Maybe my question can look more at, 'What role does design play in the cultural value of penguin books' I could look more into branding and Britons cultural values. What do they have in common.

I need to look at the book 'Penguin by Design' by Phil Baines.

After this meeting I was able to come up with a final question and plan

What role does design play in the cultural value of penguin books?

• History of Penguin and Lane
• Original 30s cover designs Edward Young
• The impact of Jan Tschichold
• Typography and Grids
• Application of Colour
• Modernisation

There is many topics I can explore that will help me learn how Penguin as a company have been able to stay successful and relevant since they began through their use of design.

For my Practical I will then design a book collection which I feel is relevant to todays Culture and Society.