For that prisoner, the penguin signified quality. It was the seal of a publisher that had fulfilled its founder's vision to bring classic novels that had historically been the exclusive domain of students and academics to the general public.
The story of how Allen Lane hit upon the idea of a book company that would sell good quality paperbacks for the same price as a packet of cigarettes is legendary, but what made Penguin iconic wasn't the breadth of titles that it encompassed, it was the use of regimented bold colours, spacing and typography on its book jackets.
Nowadays, Penguin's early editions are collectors' items, but the art of book cover design has somewhat waned over the past decade. However, with sales of e-books rapidly gathering momentum, the importance of a great cover design has never been more important and the publishing industry has responded to this threat by going back to its traditional roots.
New launches
In recent months, there has been a plethora of book launches with a greater emphasis on 'quality', many of which utilise traditional printing techniques – and there's much more to come. For example, next month Puffin will publish six special editions designed by leading artists to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Following on from the success of the Penguin Designer Classics (2006), the six titles include James and the Giant Peach, Little Women and Oliver Twist, with a cover designed by sculptor Antony Gormley, fashion designer Orla Kiely and Sir Peter Blake respectively.
The children's publisher will only release 1,000 copies of each title, priced at £100 each. The titles are individually numbered and are being released to cash in on demand for high-end books, according to Puffin art director Anna Billson.
"There is a growing market for limited edition books with high production value," confirms Billson. "People read in a disposable way now. They will go online and download a copy to read, but at the same time people love the physical book – nothing compares to the feeling you get when you hold it and discover everything that lies beyond the cover."
This 'feeling' is combined with the appeal to readers of owning collectable editions that have input from favourite artists and designers.
"It's a way of having a piece of design by someone that you may not be able to afford otherwise," she says.
As well as employing acclaimed artists, part of the push towards luxury has seen book designers revisit old printing techniques, says Miriam Rosenbloom, senior designer at Faber and Faber.
Last May, Faber and Faber published a series of six new hardback editions of 20th-century poetry, enlisting the skills of prominent printmakers such as Nick Morley and Joe McLaren to produce beautiful woodcut and linocut images for the covers.
Retro options
"There are a lot of quite retro jackets around at the moment and I guess it's a reaction to computers," adds Rosenbloom. "I think there is something with printmaking and hand-held products that creates a personal connection."
The stimulus for the poetry series came from Rosenbloom's desire to revisit the company's history of working with printmakers, such as Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, for its 80th birthday.
"To me, it's contemporary, but it also reflects the past in an interesting way," says Rosenbloom. "A further consideration was that I wanted to celebrate printmakers who are working today because there are a lot of really vibrant printmakers doing their own thing."
Faber isn't the only book publisher celebrating the current generation of printmakers. White's Books' upcoming classics series, for example, features gold-foiled linocut covers. The company has two people at its helm, Jonathan Jackson and book designer David Pearson, who was also responsible for the high-quality workmanship on Penguin's Great Ideas and Great Loves series, which featured blind de-embossing and wood blocking respectively.
Under Penguin's art director Jim Stoddart, Pearson developed the design identity for the Great Ideas series, which won him the prestigious D&D yellow pencil award for book design in 2005, as well as inclusion in The Guardian's Top 50 designers list in 2007.
Pearson acknowledges that what he really wanted to use was letterpress printing, but due to the costs and time associated, it wasn't feasible. He was forced to take the next best option, blind de-embossing.
"I didn't worry about the de-embossing because it felt right that they were sort of fake," explains Pearson. "The difference with those books is that I'm very much emulating a traditional technique, but with a modern finish, so it becomes quite kitsch."
The compromise was a resounding success and the series was nominated for numerous design awards. Pearson left Penguin in early 2008 to set up White's Books, where he is able to devote more time and effort to the use of traditional methods such as foil blocking, linocut and papercut designs.
"People feel safe and secure when they can identify certain printing methods, such as wood blocking and cloth binding," says Pearson. "You can't really argue with 500 years of book production."
While most of Penguin's backlist publishing consists of two colours and standard sizes to keep costs to a minimum, specifications for White's Books have a format size of 240x156mm, are cloth bound and use two or three PMS colours with an option for a foil colour. The manually typeset books are printed on acid-free cotton-rich 100-120gsm paper with coloured page tops.
"I'm setting the type line-by-line on the computer. Most typesetting, even at the best places, is done by a semi-automated system where you have a machine that has a series of codes to tell it that certain lines should be no longer than this, and no wider than that, but no denser than this – it's about playing around with averages. However, I can bypass that and I can look at a paragraph and evaluate it accordingly to make it more even and to minimise the hyphenation," he says.
Niche product
The result of this manual manoeuvring means each right-hand page has a hanging word that provides the opening of the following page. Pearson says you wouldn't be able to use manual typesetting at a major publishing house because of time and cost restrictions. He cites foil blocking as another effect that a designer at a large publisher would struggle to justify the costs.
"It's very rare to see foil blocking in trade publishing because it's so expensive and it's difficult to monitor the quality over a long print run. If you're doing shorter print runs – 2,000-10,000 books – it's a bit different. We can afford to hand finish certain books," he says.
The first four books by White's, which included Treasure Island with a cover design by acclaimed illustrator Stanley Donwood, came out in 2008. The publisher is set to launch six new hardback pocket editions of old classics, all designed by illustrator Joe McLaren and the titles, which include Alice in Wonderland and Great Expectations, will be released later this month.
To some extent, the old adage about never judging a book by its cover holds true – a good jacket design is no cast-iron guarantee a good book resides within, but you can judge the cover of a book based on the effort that has gone into producing it.
With influential publishing figures such as Billson, Pearson and Rosenbloom vowing to continue using influential illustrators in future series, the push towards quality book design looks set to continue to grow.
