The Story of the Penguin Modern Classics

The Design Story of Modern Classics

1961 - 1965

From the very beginning the Modern Classics used striking and evocative imagery. The first
books had a design by Hans Schmoller, featuring Eric Gill's Joanna typeface.

1965 - 1989

Later the grid designed by Romek Marber for Penguin's crime books was introduced to the
 Modern Classics. The typeface remained Joanna at first, but eventually Helvetica was
 introduced to the series.

1989 - 2000

For a time beginning in the late 8Os the series was called Penguin Twentieth-Century
Classics, with a design that kept the author and title information in a panel, and set them 
in Sabon, a typeface designed by earlier Penguin design legend Jan Tschihold.

2000 - 2007

A cover template by Jamie Keenan was introduced in 2OOO that cons-trained the
type to a bar at the bottom of the cover. This allowed the imagery to be large and 
unobscured.

2007- present

And in 2OO7 the series was redesigned again with the current grid by Penguin Art
Director Jim Stoddart, which put big, bold text over the image itself and is now the 
basis for the design of the mini Modern Classics.

© 1995 - 2012 Penguin Books Ltd

Little Red Animation

Stop Motion Book Trailer

The Joy of Books

Studio Robin

Looking towards Pride and prejudice as my focus I've found the artists below who have done a lot of work that focuses on this story and have extended it past just cover art.


Pemberley Pond - Tumblr



The Pond



Studio Robin - Illustration

Covers

I think the best way of per suing the area of cover art is to focus on one or a few particular, well known stories to create the covers for, one that I'm considering is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as it has been published over and over again with hundred of different covers.

Pride and Prejudice Covers

The Art of Words

As with narrative words are usually expected - even if unnecessary - I thought I should look at including typography into my work. Typography is something that I've always had an interest in so I'm really excited to be able to use it in my work, to begin looking at the subject I found a book of typography sketchbooks.

These are just some of the artists I found and loved the way they designed and played with words.