The Brief

Per our assignment, we created a series of stamps comprising 4-8 designs. Each of us was assigned a specific topic on which to base our stamps. In my case, I was given the topic of Penguin and Puffin books. Additionally, we must create a hand stamp, with a maximum of two allowed. The assignment's objective is to showcase a wide range of ideas backed up by thorough research and development.

I want to create a book design with the stamp collection. I don't want to complicate this design brief, as I want to showcase the best parts of the Penguin Book company and its humble beginnings. 

Green covers were generally for crime novels, cerise (or pink to some) was travel and adventure, dark blue were biographies, red for drama, purple for essays, and yellow was for miscellaneous titles that did not fit into any of the above categories.  The most common and most famous colour scheme was orange for Penguin's fiction. Those iconic and instantly recognisable novels were found on every reader's bookshelf from World War II to the Swinging Sixties.

I love the designs of the classic penguin books; they are very graphic, eye-catching, and simplistic. I want to use this classic design with my twist on it.  

Research
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List of Books
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Iconic Design
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Penguin revolutionized publishing in the 1930s with their affordable paperbacks. Founded by V. K. Krishna Menon and Sir Allen Lane with his brothers, they sold for sixpence. The iconic Penguin paperbacks launched on July 30, 1935, with a logo inspired by penguins and designed by Edward Young. The logo had three stripes: orange for fiction, green for crime, and dark blue for biography. The central white panel contained the author's name, printed in black ink using Eric Gill's sans-serif font.​
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​Penguin expanded to include Porpoise, Peacock, Peregrine, Ptarmigan & Puffin. A boy suggested a new Puffin slogan: “It’s a P’Super—It’s a Psychedelic.” The editor liked it but “psychedelic” was too drug-related. ​



Penguin Books' covers followed the golden ratio (4⅜" × 7⅛", 111mm × 181mm), with a warmer orange color. Jan Tschichold used Monotype Bembo, Monotype Centaur, and Gill's Perpetua for typography, and wrote the Penguin Composition Rules guidelines.

I plan to create a timeline of the essential penguin books, which will be presented in a box resembling a penguin book.

I picked each of these books because they were among the first published Penguin books in each of their colour-coded genres.