What started out to be a relatively short response post on the current position of British book cover design, has turned into a four-parter. Sorry, I went down a rabbit hole.
As I will be mentioning many designers from the past, many of whom I have blogged about over the years, I will add links and the foot of this post, should you be interested in learning more about them.
So, now on to part 2...
The emergence of Swinging London
The swinging 60s, bright young things were taking over
During the early 1960s, there was a dramatic sea change in the creative scene in London. Virtually every area of creativity was making waves: Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki in fashion, Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton in modelling, David Bailey and Terence Donovan in photography, David Hockney and Bridget Riley in painting, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in music, Lindsay Anderson and John Schlesinger in film, Albert Finney and Julie Christie in acting, and Harold Pinter and John Osborne in theatre.
Above Town magazine art directed by Tom Wolsey
All conspired to help to create the term ‘Swinging London’, as coined by Time magazine in 1966. For the first time, weekend colour supplements dropped onto our doormats, and Town magazine, under Tom Wolsey’s art directorship, was making waves. At long last, Britain seemed to be surfacing from the gloomy, rationed, post-war years of the 1950s.
Many young graphic designers were hatching out from the various design and art schools. They moved into advertising, television and film, with some setting up their own small design groups and others even forming pop groups. In graphics, most were echoing the work they had been inspired by from America and Switzerland. Clean graphics and modernist typography were displacing the well-trodden English polite approach to design that hadn’t much changed in the previous four decades, and the term ‘graphic designer’ was beginning to replace the more commonly used ‘commercial artist’. Fletcher/Forbes/Gill opened their studio, as did Derek Birdsall with BDMW Associates. A new order was being established.
In 1962, the US film To Kill a Mockingbird was released. The opening title sequence was to have a big impact on graphic designers. It was designed and directed by Stephen Frankfurt using inanimate objects shot with macro lenses. To my mind, to this very day, it remains one of the most beautiful and timeless pieces of work ever produced. Judge for yourself. Watch the title sequence here.
Above, stills from Stephen Frankfurt's beautiful title sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird
Below are five covers that I think clearly make a direct link with Frankfurt’s work.
The above two covers are by Raymond Hawkey form 1963 and 64. The Ipcress File in particular was loathed by the publishers, but Deighton dug his heels in and went against the sales department. It was an enormous success and spawned many imitations.
Tutor at the Royal College of Art in the 1960's, Larry Carter designed and photographed and number of covers, including the above, using macro lens shots.
Derek Birdsall worked with photographer Harry Peccinotti to create a wonderful continuous run of objects across Penguin's Somerset Maugham's series of books.
Pick up a Penguin
Back to book covers. In 1960, Tony Godwin joined Penguin as an editor. He formerly ran Better Books, Bumpus and the City Bookshop. Because of this, he had a coalface view of selling to the public. His view of cover design differed from that of Penguin’s founder, Sir Allen Lane. Within a year, Godwin had hired Germano Facetti, a sophisticated young Italian, to oversee the design of their covers. He was gifted with an inspired knowledge of art and photographic history, something he would put to good use. Facetti’s impact on Penguin was to revolutionise the look of crime fiction covers. He commissioned Romek Marber to create a new ‘house style’ (the term ‘brand’ hadn’t yet entered the vernacular) to replace the long-standing vertical green bar styling created by Jan Tschichold, introduced back in 1951.
Above. Jan Tschichold's revised cover house styling introduced in 1951.
Marber came up with a uniform typographic structure taking up the top quarter of the cover, leaving the bottom three-quarters area free for an image.
Romek Marber's unique styling. It gave Penguin it's modernist personality to sync with the zeitgeist.
Milton Glaser, along with so many great designers and illustrators slotted perfectly into Marber's structure.
Above three of Marber's own creations.
Quentin Blake, Ben Shahn and André François, just a few of many great illustrators commissioned by Facetti.
Germano Facetti had a supreme knowledge of art history, and the ability to know just the right image to grace the covers of Penguin Classics. I remember my old business partner Ken Carroll, who had assisted Facetti for a short while in the 1960s, having Facetti insist that Ken crop ever closer into an image to give it a cinematic quality. He was right of course.
Facetti attracted the very best emerging designers and illustrators around to produce a design for a fee of £30 (around £240 today). He had no shortage of takers, including Peter Blake, Alan Fletcher, Derek Birdsall, David Gentleman, Mel Calman, Paul Hogarth, George Mayhew, Larry Carter, Quentin Blake and André François. In fact, virtually anyone he wanted. The introduction of Marber’s distinctive cover styling was again leading the way in cover design, reflecting the literary cachet that Penguin had – it was a publisher you could trust and one that cared about the look and production of its books, with an institutional mission akin to Lord Reith’s BBC.
"It is more important that Penguin has established a high standard throughout, rather than swinging from good to bad, cover to cover, as almost all other publishers do."
GERMANO FACETTI
In a master stroke Germano Facetti commissioned David Gentleman to design and wood engraving for the Penguin Shakespeare series.
What goes up must come down
All was running smoothly and ever upwards until Penguin became a public company in 1961. It expanded and many new people came in to help run it. Allen Lane continued as managing director but slowly became disenchanted with how the company was changing.
The exotic Alan Aldridge (right) in the 1960s.
Tony Godwin eventually took on the mantle of Penguin’s chief editor. At this time, he felt that Facetti’s stark two-colour-line cover house style was too restrictive and sophisticated. In 1965, he hired the up-and-coming designer/illustrator Alan Aldridge, who had, in fact, not only been commissioned by Facetti a few times but was also his friend. Godwin made Aldridge fiction art director and, over Facetti’s head, hatched a plot with Aldridge to change the carefully orchestrated covers art directed by Facetti. Now in a cosseted position under the protection of Godwin, Aldridge immediately dispensed with Marber’s grid, liberating the whole cover and, importantly for him, showing off his talent. Street-smart Aldridge was beginning to make a reputation and saw Penguin as an opportunity to shine.
Above. Aldridge designed and astonishing run of covers himself while fiction art director of Penguin
Above, cover illustrations by Jack Larkin, one of many illustrators that Aldridge liked.
In this new position, Aldridge was very cavalier in his approach: everything was up for grabs on the little rectangle canvas, even the Penguin logo appeared haphazardly in different sizes. In a very short space of time, all of the work so painstakingly instigated by Facetti was destroyed.
Aldridge's work quickly became in demand, especially with the relatively new weekend colour magazine supplements.
The final straw for Allen Lane was the Tony Godwin's publication of Siné’s Massacre. Lane was furious and Godwin left the firm. It was later reported that Lane had all copies of Massacre pulped.
Aldridge’s star was rising and his work was being featured everywhere, and The Beatles were rather taken with his wild, colourful, psychedelic imaginings. Allen Lane became increasingly unhappy with Godwin and was enraged when in 1967 he published the English edition of French cartoonist Siné’s periodical ‘Massacre’. It contained anti-clerical cartoons, and many bookstores refused to stock it. In a subsequent disagreement with Lane, Godwin was fired. Needless to say, Aldridge didn’t stay long after that: he was now a sought-after image maker and left to join the glitterati, spending quite a lot of his time painting on young, naked female bodies, as was the norm in those LSD-fuelled years. Facetti continued at Penguin, working on non-fiction and classic fiction covers. But the damage to Penguin’s image had been done. Apparently Facetti never spoke to Aldridge again.
Brilliance from across the pond
Meanwhile, back in the US, the collective Push Pin Studios had been beavering away since the mid 1950s producing work of such astonishing diversity that it made what was going on in the UK look pretty three-piece-suited.
Designed by Ivan Chermayeff 1960.
From the mid-1950s, Push Pin Studio published The Push Pin Graphic. It was filled with exuberant experimental work that blew everyone's mind.
Illustration by Seymour Chwast, who to this day is still producing formidable work.
Above: Covers designed by Milton Glaser from the 1960s to 70s.
Push Pin Studios were simply streets ahead. And Alan Aldridge was clearly influenced by them and the great Twen magazine art directed by Willy Fleckhaus and his main illustrator Heinz Edelmann.
Twen ran from the late 1950s to 1970.
Above. Twen's most regular contributor, illustrator Heinz Edelmann.
Willy Fleckhaus' rainbow colour series for publisher Edition Suhrkamp, 1963, The first 48 titles
Above two more of Willy Feckhaus' book covers from the 60s. He was also art director of Twen magazine, the most sort after publication in the 60s, constantly inventive and graphically fabulous.
The Beatles led the way on the sartorial front in the late 1960s to the mid 1970's
Suddenly, the Swiss discipline was out, as were the fashions of the time. Hey presto: skirts got shorter, bras were dispensed with, men grew Zapata moustaches and shoulder-length hair, and floral shirts and flares became sartorial must-haves. The late 1960s and early ’70s went psychedelic. Move over Helvetica; hello Art Nouveau and Art Deco – love and peace are all around you.
Above and below, the work of the shot live supergroup, Bentley/Farrell/Burnett a prolifically talented trio. Nicholas Thirkell, art director of Macmillan publishers in the 60s/70s and I, at the same period, was art director of William Heinemann, became friendly rivals, always trying to trump each other in producing the best hardback covers. He went on to set up NTA studio with another talented bunch of creative talent. More of which later.
For those of us in the publishing industry during the late 1960s and ’70s, Penguin was always the publisher to watch for innovative work on covers. After the hiatus created by Godwin and Aldridge, things at Penguin became a little directionless. Until 1968, when David Pelham was appointed fiction art director.
Above, one of David Pelham's Studio covers, the magazine he art directed, prior to taking up the post as art director of Penguin Books. Both he and his work was a perfect fit to get things creatively back on track for Penguin.
He came from a background in magazines: Studio International and Harper’s Bazaar. He was not only cultured but a highly creative talent in his own right, as he demonstrated during his 11-year stint at Penguin.
Cover illustration by Donna Brown.
Cover designed by Michael Morris 1979.
Cover designed by Jones/Thompson 1975.
Cover designed by Patrick McCereth 1973.
Designed by David Pelham 1975
Designed by David Pelham 1975
Derek Birdsall designed the cover styling for the Penguin Original series under his design company named Omnific and often commission others to create images. The above from 1973 by Birdsall.
Cover designed by David Pelham 1983.
Penguin modern stories series designed by David Pelham 1983.
In 1980 David Pelham redesigned the Penguin Shakespeare series and commissioned Illustrator Paul Hogarth.
David Pelham was/is a multi talented individual, from simple classic pure conceptual work, he is also a fine illustrator as shown in the above tree covers from the mid 1970s..
Pelham was a great talent spotter, as here with the delightful work of Jannat Houston (later Messenger) for the Miss Read books above.
The entire Evelyn Waugh series was designed by Bentley/Farrell/Burnett in the 1980s.
A regular Pelham favourite was John Gorham. His work was utterly beautiful, as the above three covers demonstrate. There is no one like him today, and the same applies to the next genius featured below.
Above, just three of the many covers designed for Penguin by the super talented innovator and craftsman, Tony Meeuwissen.
Above, photographs by Harry Peccinotti. In addition to collaborations with Derek Birdsall, he was also commissioned by both Facetti and Pelham.
The above two are photographed by Dennis Rolfe a Pelham regular.
And above Cover photograph by Barry Lategan.
Cover design by John McConnell who would later go on revolutionalise the look of Faber& Faber.
This cover, designed and illustrated by John Gorham, sends up the age-old approach to 'selly' covers. In an ironic twist of fate, David Pelham actually found himself having to produce that very thing. The cover shown below was the result. He left Penguin shortly after.
He only departed after being reduced to producing covers that clearly saddened him, brought about by the dominant force of Peter Mayer, who joined Penguin in 1978 as managing director.
A sad departure. Being in the publishing industry at the time, I knew the writing was on the wall. I couldn't see how David Pelham would enduring having to produce this kind of thing for long.
Mayer was there to turn the company around and sell more ‘units’, as books became known as. Mayer had a liking for the unsophisticated and downright obvious ‘selly’ clichéd covers. Pelham initially went along with this but his heart clearly wasn’t in it and in 1979 left. It was a sad loss. Blockbusters started to be included on the list and, over a short period, Penguin’s essence, which had always been made visible by caring designers like Jan Tschichold, Hans Schmoller, Tony Richardson, Germano Facetti, Romek Marber, Gerry Cinnamon, Alan Spain and David Pelham, ebbed away.
A long-term Penguin stalwart was Gerald Cinamon, over his time there he worked under Germano Facetti and Hans Schmoller, and designed a beautiful run of work, mostly Pelican non-fiction, art and poetry.
I have given a lot of space in this part to Penguin Books simply because I admired it so much, along with many of my contemporaries. But I don’t want to give the impression that nothing else was going on.
I admired the work of John Piper, art director of Corgi Books in the 60s and 70s.The Corgi Modern Reading series, all illustrated by Ken Sequin was just wonderful with perfect typography by Piper.For this famous book where its author, J.P.Donleavy insisted on only typography for his covers. Piper came up with this little gem.
And this was Piper's styling for Corgi's Science Fiction series.
In addition to John Piper, Steven Abis at Panther Books and David Larkin at Pan Books were all producing and commissioning some great work in the late ’60s to ’70s. At that time, I had moved from hardback publishers William Heinemann to become art director of the William Collins paperback imprint Fontana, where I closely followed what David Pelham was doing while having my own battles with the sales department, the plague of the art director with their increasing pressure to create what they consider are 'selling' covers.
Two hardback covers from the period that I still hold in great stead are these...
Above, designed by Nicholas Thirkell for Macmillan in 1967. For which he enlarged train ticket for the jacket, with a die cut punched hole, allowing the author and title to be seen from binding case. Brilliant.
This was jacket was designed by a long forgotten ex Royal College of Art design group Churchill/Holmes/Kitley, for William Heinemann in 1965. The red lips image was a plastic lenticular with the mouth provocatively opening and closing depending on which way you looked at it. They were stuck onto each jacket. What mainstream publisher would do that today?
Part 3. The final part of, 'Beware book covers ahead!', features John McConnell's facelift of Faber & Faber in the 1980s. The digital disrupter, a new breed of illustrators and looking at what the noughties have delivered to the publishing scene, both her and the USA.
If you missed Part 1 Click HERE
For more information on some of the designers mentioned in this post. Just click on to the name to access post.
Tom Wolsey Raymond Hawkey Derek Birdsall Romek Marber David Gentleman Alan Aldridge Jack Larkin Ivan Chermayeff Willy Fleckhaus Bentley/Farrell/Burnett John Gorham Tony Meeuwissen Ken Sequin Nicholas Thirkell/NTA Studio
There is also a BBC Radio documentary on Allen Lane HERE