Edward Young and Penguin

Edward Young is a british graphic design best known for his work on the design of the front covers of penguin books. His designs for the cover were in 1935. The designs used sans serif typefaces which were very modern around the time of publishing. The look of each book were similar, using the same layout and typefaces. He also made sets of colours for the different types of books:
Orange and white for novels, green for crime and detective novels and light blue for the pelican series of books.

Although that was his only main design set, he influenced designers who took hold of the penguin cover design. These included Jan Tschichold in 1949. The three section covers of penguin are an iconic look of a penguin book and are now recognised as penguin, without seeing the logo.

While the books today, have left the original penguin design, they still use some elements found in the very first books, these include the sans serif type, gridded layout - often split into three rows and the simple colour scheme.


















http://designmuseum.org/design/penguin-books