Happy New Year! Hope you and yours had a lovely holiday. Mine was hectic (we live on the West coast, our families live on the East coast, and we had a trip to DisneyWorld thrown in before Christmas). But as always, delightful to spend time with friends and family.

This year, I got a couple of gifts that we just so “me” that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The first was a set of Penguin postcards from my three nephews. Imagine, 100 Penguin book covers in postcard form… heaven!

You’ll find everything from The Great Gatsby to There Must be a Pony!

According to the little write up on the cover of the box, Penguin encourages you to judge a book by its cover:

In 1935 Allen Lane stood on a platform at Exeter railway station, looking for a good book for the journey to London. His disappointment at the poor range of paperbacks on offer led him to found Penguin Books. The quality paperback had arrived.

Declaring that ‘good design is no more expensive than bad,’ Lane was adamant that his Penguin paperbacks should cost no more than a pack of cigarettes, but that they should always look distinctive.

Ever since then, from their original — and now world-famous — look featuring three bold horizontal stripes, through many different stylish, inventive and iconic cover designs, Penguin’s paperback jackets have been a constantly evolving part of Britain’s culture. And whether they’re for classics, crime or prize-winning novels, they still follow Allen Lane’s original design mantra.

I plan to choose my favourites and frame them for my office. The rest shall be sent out to family, friends and clients to help spread great design!