Looking for a ?dignified but flippant? symbol for the new business in
1935, it was Allen's secretary, Joan Coles, who came up with the name
Penguin after he had suggested a 'dignified but flippant' name, either
an animal or bird. Lane sent the office junior, Edward Young, to
London zoo to sketch the penguins for the logo.
"It started with the simple logo and name, suggested, allegedly, by a
typist who was earwigging the board meeting. Allen had already hit
upon the idea of an animal logo, inspired by the template offered by
the contemporary publishing house The Albatross Library. "It was the
obvious answer, a stroke of genius," said Penguin's original designer,
Edward Young. "I went straight off to the zoo to spend the rest of the
day drawing penguins in every pose." The clear logo was matched with
the archetypal modern, but not too scarily modern, typeface, Gill
Sans, and the now classic three-band cover, with colours related to
the subject: orange for fiction, dark blue for biography, etc."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,6000,552107,00.html
"Despite the opposition of his fellow directors, Lane decided to
launch a series of sixpenny paperbacks from within the Bodley Head.
According to publishing folklore, he had the idea when stranded on
Exeter station on his way home from a weekend with Agatha Christie,
and found himself appalled by the rubbish on offer at the railway
bookstall. Lane was not, as is sometimes claimed, the first paperback
publisher: but paperbacks had hitherto been synonymous with tosh,
luridly presented, and he was determined to publish books that had
some literary worth, and looked elegant as well. A secretary suggested
a name for the new series, and a colleague was despatched to the zoo
to draw a penguin for the covers."
http://arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/05/08/bolane.xml
"Lane?s secretary suggested Penguin as a ?dignified, but flippant?
name for the company and the office junior Edward Young was sent to
sketch the penguins at London Zoo as its logotype. Young was then
asked to design the covers of the first set of ten paperbacks to be
published in summer 1935 including Ariel and A Farewell to Arms.
Considering illustrated book covers to be trashy, Lane insisted on his
following a simple horizontal grid for Penguin?s jackets in colours
that signified the genre of each book: orange for fiction, green for
crime, and blue for biography.
The rigorous application of colour, grid and typography in those early
paperbacks instilled Penguin with a commitment to design from the
start."
http://www.designmuseum.org/design/index.php?id=101
I hope this helps.
Search terms used on Google: [ "allen lane" penguin secretary "joan coles" ] |
