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!

Design credits, left to right: Goya’s Dog (David Gee); Fauna (Jennifer Lum); Kenk (Nick Marinkovich, Alex Jansen & Jason Gilmore); Cigar Box Banjo (Heather Pringle); Seven Good Reasons not to be Good (David Gee)

My personal favourite is Heather Pringle’s design for Cigar Box Banjo. I love how rich it feels, and the dimension the design gives to the cover, and the joy it seems to express. I am also struck by the similarity of the cover designs for Cigar Box Banjo and Seven Good Reasons not to be Good. Both use movement and direction to jump the eye around the cover… but with completely different (really, almost opposite) design aesthetics. And yet my first thought when seeing them was “wow, they’re so similar!”

Anyway, nice work! You can read more about each selection on Quill & Quire’s website.