When Paul Buckley, Creative Director for Penguin Classics, sent me a copy of his new book, Classic Penguin/Cover to Cover, I jumped at the chance to slack off for a good read. It’s no lie that I’m a big fan of Paul’s work over the years [more]. It’s also true that I ran away from home at age 4.5 years to the library, so it’s not a stretch to say that I know a thing or two about books.

First of all, why book covers are so important. Before you get to the juicy parts of a book—like the touch, feel, and smell of a particular volume, you get to savor its wrapping. The art; the design; the typography; the combination of those elements with color, texture, and style that make you want to pick a particular read out of a mass of others competing for your attention at your neighborhood bookstore. [This, dear reader, is why it’s so important to read solid books purchased in a solid environment; it’s all part of getting a solid reading experience.]

Three titles from the "Threads" series, artwork left and center: Jillian Tamaki; artwork right: Rachell Sumpter

Second, why it takes a lot to produce a book cover that will make you do just that. After reading Classic Penguin I can relate a thing or two about this. This book is an invitation to enter the world in which hundreds of people do nothing but immerse themselves in reading, conceptualizing, collaborating, and producing thousands of these amazing works of art-and-commerce every year. How, with Penguin Classics, they turn the tables on books we think we know something about—having been familiar with titles like Wuthering Heights, Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, for example, our entire lives. As Paul said in a recent interview,

“Classics have been packaged so many times, over so many years, and often this is what freaks designers out—'Oh my god, it’s been done 100 different ways already, how am I going to come up with anything new?' Instead of walking through the front door, come in from the back door, come down the chimney, climb through a window, and turn off that goddamn waltz. Bring new music, open the windows and let some fresh air in, mix up some cocktails and have fun with it. Make it a costume party and give the protagonist a new set of fun clothes to party in….Have some fun with it, and highlight to a new audience that classics are not locked into any one time and place, their challenges, hopes, dreams, are the same as we all go through today. Just without smart phones.” [More]

The Penguin "Orange" series; before, left; after, center and right, artwork by Eric Nyquist

The book also brings into view the importance of marketing—and how the team at Penguin functions as a unit that covers the spectrum as a matter of course. The section about the relaunch of what is called the “Orange” series is a great example of what Paul relates in the quote above. The Oranges, if you remember the stack of thin, tri-striped Inspector Maigret paperbacks piled in your aunt’s guest room during your childhood, were the original “cheap reads” of the book world. The editor, Elda Rotor, “has introduced new and often more contemporary titles, and I’ve updated the design to be more modern,” says Paul. “Integral to that was removing the penguin from its oval and keeping that oval exactly the size it would have been around the beloved bird, turning it sideways, and placing it up top where the original Penguin Books blobby shape was located (what would one call that shape?).”

Illustrator Eric Nyquist takes it from there: “Now I look at the Penguin Classics cover differently. Not as a classical flat design but as a rebellious 3-D landscape that displays the horriffic, the absurd, and the taboo. I enjoy the fact that fluorescent splattered, dripping sludge beside a blow-up doll and handcuffs might suggest a storyline of an ‘80s porno, but upon further review is actually the remnants of a Stonecipheo Corporation baby food (beef flavor) spit out by an unruly infant.” Plus the beloved penguin has been reimagined as a live character about to dance off the page.

You get the idea. Read it—from cover to cover—to energize your own art and reading experiences. Classic Penguin/Cover to Cover (Penguin Random House 2016), Edited with an Introduction by Paul Buckley; Foreword by Audrey Niffenegger; Preface by Elda Rotor. Info

Paul Buckley is creative director for Penguin Classics and oversees a large staff of exceptionally talented designers and art directors working on the jackets and covers of sixteen imprints within the Penguin Random House publishing group. Over the past two decades, his iconic design and singular art direction have been showcased on thousands of covers and jackets, winning him many awards and frequent invitations to speak in the United States and abroad. In 2010, he edited and introduced Penguin 75.