Sunday 14 May 2017

OUGD404: Initial research and designs penguin book covers

In this brief we were tasked with using the marber grid to reproduce 3 classic penguin book covers. In 1961 a Polish graphic designer by the name of Romek Marber created a grid layout for Penguin book covers that became one of the most famous layouts of all time. Prior to the design marber grid layout, Penguin tended to favour simple typographic covers for their publications. Abraim Games, the consultant art director from 1956 to 1958, had tried to convince Penguin bosses to introduce pictorial designs before, but his proposals were refused.
Due to his grid being used first on the penguin crime series I only thought it would be right to choose three book from the series to re produce.

chosen books:


Sweet danger:
Detective is hired to track down whether land on the Adratic sea belongs to aristocratic family, whilst family in small village of Suffolk are claimants.

Look to the lady:

The murder mystery starts after a man who upset the family by being photographed with the chalice, is found lying dead in a spooky forest clearing, apparently frightened to death.

Police at the funeral:


The fiancee of an old college friend calls the detective to investigate the disappearance of her uncle, he little expects the mysterious spate of death and dangers that follows.



After reading a little bit about each novel I tried to pick out key parts which could intrigue to audience and get them to pick up the books. I decided to use illustrations to demonstrate this. I wanted to keep the designs pretty simple and not too much going the page. These are my initial sketches which I then mocked up onto the marber grid. Although I really enjoy drawing I wasn’t at all keen on these set of drawing. I feel they lack looking consistent and look a bit out of place on such a clean thought out grid.













No comments:

Post a Comment