Why are Penguin classics so ugly?

ConversazioniGeeks who love the Classics

Iscriviti a LibraryThing per pubblicare un messaggio.

Why are Penguin classics so ugly?

Questa conversazione è attualmente segnalata come "addormentata"—l'ultimo messaggio è più vecchio di 90 giorni. Puoi rianimarla postando una risposta.

1Cecrow
Ago 10, 2015, 11:58 am

So many of them are terrible. What was the marketing strategy here, I wonder? "Only read this if you're serious about reading and might enjoy it, otherwise stay away!" My wife saw this Camus cover and said "What's wrong with that guy? I hope you read that one fast."

I'd avoid them entirely except, hey, fifty cents. Those must have been some pretty grim bookstore shelves in their day.



Other "favourite" examples you can share?

2PawsforThought
Ago 10, 2015, 12:07 pm

Urgh. So many book covers are ugly. I hardly like any, which makes it difficult buying books (I'm not buying something that's ugly).
And I can't understand why people like the "Classic Penguin" covers. I just think they're awful.

3southernbooklady
Ago 10, 2015, 12:26 pm

>1 Cecrow: What was the marketing strategy here, I wonder?

Two thoughts:

-- they pick artwork that doesn't require licensing fees
-- they want to subtly encourage people to forgo the classic paperbacks in favor of one of the fancy sets they are continually producing.

4Nickelini
Ago 10, 2015, 12:33 pm

>1 Cecrow: That example looks pretty old. 1970s or 1980s editions? Sometimes older covers look ugly because fashions change and our eye adjusts to a different look. I know I've had older books from all sorts of publishers that I thought were bad, but when I try to look at them through my 70s or 80s eyes, I can see what the publisher was doing and realize that at the time the cover might have been pretty nice. I sort of like the example you gave -- the typeface for the author's name and title are effective, and I suspect the image used is a copy of a painting that fits the mood of the book (though I haven't read that one so don't know).

Penguin changes their covers often, and they've put out some beautiful editions.

>2 PawsforThought: And I can't understand why people like the "Classic Penguin" covers. I just think they're awful.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here, but wondering if you mean the covers without images that just have the author's name and title, and are usually orange and white bands of colour? (sometimes green, sometimes purple--the colours once had meaning but I can't remember what it was). People like those for nostalgia and because they look vintage. They remind us of simpler times when we could spend a day reading and the world wasn't so loud. That's my theory, anyway.

5LolaWalser
Ago 10, 2015, 12:34 pm

Flawed premise, everything downstream of it just tanks.

7Cecrow
Modificato: Ago 10, 2015, 2:04 pm

>6 cpg:, fantastic link, thank you. How taste changes over time! And for my example, it makes more sense knowing that this cover was from a painting and not just produced for this work.

Still lacking justification for the pink font on grey-green background they chose for the back cover.

8PawsforThought
Ago 10, 2015, 2:02 pm

>4 Nickelini: Both those and the ones that are newer, with the black lower half, a white band and an image in the top half.

But I'm not generally a fan of when publishers put the same style cover on books from different authors. Same style on all the books by the same author, yes please! But not the same on different ones.

9Nickelini
Ago 10, 2015, 2:26 pm

>7 Cecrow:, >8 PawsforThought: I pay a lot of attention to book covers, and the Penguin Classic covers almost always (or always? I can't say since I haven't checked every single one) use existing art, usually paintings. They are often sourced from Bridgeman Art Library (or similar), which are not free images.

But I'm not generally a fan of when publishers put the same style cover on books from different authors. Same style on all the books by the same author, yes please! But not the same on different ones.

You're not alone with that idea. For myself, I enjoy looking at my shelf full of black Penguin spines, or green Viragos, or red Vintage Classics.

Still lacking justification for the pink font on grey-green background they chose for the back cover. -- Well, that sounds fairly hideous, but the colour combination sounds like something that would have been popular in the 1980s.

10PossMan
Ago 10, 2015, 2:35 pm

Can't help thinking that some of the old covers are quite stylish. Just a month or so ago I bought a set of Penguin/Pelican postcards featuring old covers and I'm looking at "Homer: The Odyssey" by EV Rieu. Black text on white with brown surround and a small circle with a ship. Old-fashioned - yes; but I quite like it. The Penguin edition I bought perhaps a couple of years ago is larger format and an image takes up the top 2/3rds of the cover. I'm not sure I prefer it (the cover, not the text).

11Nickelini
Ago 10, 2015, 3:25 pm

>10 PossMan: I was drawing blank on your description, so went off and found this:



Is this what you meant? I've never seen this style of Penguin before--do you know how old it is? I agree that it's lovely.

12cs80
Ago 10, 2015, 6:22 pm

I like their classics series with the cloth covers. They look good and just feel comfortable in your hands while reading.

13Nickelini
Ago 10, 2015, 7:33 pm

>12 cs80: Are you talking about these?



I like them too, although if I were the designer given this project, I would have made it quite a bit different. Still, they're pretty nice and some of them are quite clever.

It's possible I've already discussed these with PawsForThought, who I suspect doesn't like them at all!

You brought up a good point-- feeling comfortable in your hands. This is a big thing for me too. I really dislike hard little mass market paperbacks that are difficult to keep open, especially when they have small print crammed on the page. I also have some books that look nice, but the cover stock is almost oily feeling. Yuck. White space - good! Decent quality paper - yes! Tactile experience is part of it too.

14MMcM
Modificato: Ago 10, 2015, 7:54 pm

I think >10 PossMan: may be referring to Overton's design for the first edition of the first Penguin Classic, Rieu's translation of The Odyssey: http://www.penguinfirsteditions.com/index.php?cat=mainL001-099

15PawsforThought
Ago 11, 2015, 5:09 am

>13 Nickelini: I think they're very pretty, but I wouldn't want them as they make books by different authors look like they belong together.

16PossMan
Modificato: Ago 11, 2015, 8:04 am

>11 Nickelini:: The card is very similar but not quite identical. It is the one that >14 MMcM:: has linked to. The date is given as 1946.
Thanks MMcM for that link to the other covers in the series.

17SassyLassy
Ago 11, 2015, 3:41 pm

I've always loved Penguin books, so here's my take:

>1 Cecrow: The cover you have is from the Penguin Modern Classics series, not the Penguin Classics, and the art work was selected with that in mind. The books in the modern series all had grey spines. As >4 Nickelini: says, the covers for that series format suited the era in which it ran.

That may also explain the change in background colour for Penguin Classics. When images were first used on the covers, the spines were orange, perhaps in keeping with the older Penguins without images. Later, the spines moved to black with a colour bar across the top indicating whether it was originally an English language book or other language. The covers on these books were framed:



Then the frame was dropped:



The colour bar was dropped and the title was moved to the bottom of the cover with the white separating bar continuing onto the spine:



As far as the cloth covers go, I thought the first one I saw was great, then got the book home and realized that there were none of the usual additions to the text: introduction, notes, bibliography and so on, that I found so wonderful in other Penguin books, so I have gone back to the paper editions.

Going back to your question about other "grim" covers from that series, how about this one?

18Nickelini
Ago 11, 2015, 5:14 pm

>17 SassyLassy: Nice description and information!

19cs80
Ago 12, 2015, 1:53 am

At least some of the cloth covered penguin books have all the bells and whistles. Metamorphoses has Preface, Chronology, Introduction, Further Reading, Translator's Note, Notes, Glossary, and Map .

20Cecrow
Modificato: Ago 12, 2015, 7:38 am

You're right, it's the Penguin Modern Classics I was referring to (and thank you for another horrible example.) I've always liked the framed Penguin Classics, not so much the interim ones without the frame, but again the more current series with the black bar at bottom.

Elias Canetti was done no favours either (although in his case it's not just Penguin, hardly anyone has cast a good cover on this):



Either before or after that, they tried again. Two strikes.

21thorold
Ago 12, 2015, 9:17 am

>17 SassyLassy:

Totally subjective, but back in the seventies I wouldn't have considered reading a black Penguin Classic in public. Super-dull. The only ones to be seen with were the grey Modern Classics. (Or perhaps a 1940s Penguin Classic like the one in >11 Nickelini: )

22LolaWalser
Ago 12, 2015, 10:16 am

>20 Cecrow:

You seem to be taking your subjective dislike of the art used for an objective assessment of the design's quality.

23Cecrow
Ago 12, 2015, 1:06 pm

>22 LolaWalser:, I'll plead guilty to that. My subjective opinion of the art is that it's pretty ugly, true enough. Thing is, I suspect a poll today would side the majority with me. What I've learned from this conversation is that I can't say whether that would have been the case at the time this art was chosen for the cover.

24LolaWalser
Ago 12, 2015, 1:12 pm

In few minutes another Penguin will be along, with a prettier picture on its cover. Maybe even Hello Kitty. :)

25Cecrow
Modificato: Ago 12, 2015, 2:20 pm

Maybe that will be Tomcat Murr, or perhaps The Master and Margarita!

(wow, Bulgakov is almost impossible to line up the correct touchstone for ...)

26PawsforThought
Ago 12, 2015, 3:24 pm

If someone ever actually thinks it'd be a good idea to have Hello Kitty on the cover for The Master and Margarita, I'm going to go live in a cave.

27Nickelini
Ago 12, 2015, 4:48 pm

>26 PawsforThought: If someone ever actually thinks it'd be a good idea to have Hello Kitty on the cover for The Master and Margarita, I'm going to go live in a cave.

Okay, fair enough. But are you okay with this?:



For more, see: http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.ca/2012/10/humiliating-henry-james.html

28PawsforThought
Ago 12, 2015, 5:02 pm

>27 Nickelini: Well, I've never read Henry James so have no emotional attachment to him or his work so it doesn't affect me the way a horrid TM&M cover would - as that is my favourite book ever.

Having said that, the cover is atrocious. And the website is giving me nightmares.

29Nickelini
Ago 12, 2015, 5:36 pm

>28 PawsforThought: - I just wonder what the publisher was thinking. Daisy Miller is a 19th century story. Is this a joke? Or did they not realize that? It makes me very curious.

30southernbooklady
Ago 12, 2015, 6:06 pm

>27 Nickelini: Holy crap. I can't believe those are real.

31PawsforThought
Ago 12, 2015, 6:08 pm

>29 Nickelini: Looking at the other covers on the site I'm guessing someone just did an image search (on a word related to the title or author) for royalty-free pictures and grabbed whatever showed up.

32PossMan
Ago 13, 2015, 9:25 am

A bit OT as far as Penguins are concerned but as we're on covers the Guardian has just given a list of what it thinks may be the best designs of 2015. Though as we still have over 4 months to go I think they're a bit early off the starting blocks:-
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/gallery/2015/aug/12/the-best-book-des...

33Cecrow
Ago 13, 2015, 9:48 am

>32 PossMan:, I can't read the title of the last one. How is that good?

34PossMan
Modificato: Ago 13, 2015, 2:22 pm

>33 Cecrow:: The last one is the same book as the one above - "Covert Operations". As the text says it's the inside not the cover. As for "good" I can only say this would not be one of my choices (even for the top 5000 perhaps).

35PawsforThought
Ago 13, 2015, 5:22 pm

>32 PossMan: Some of those were nice, but half of them were awful, IMO. Why is it that just having the author's name and the title of the book printed over the entire front cover is considered "good"?