Penguin book design and Romek Marber
Like so many others I have always been visually drawn to the design of the Penguin Book covers, but I realised about five years ago that I had slipped into becoming a collector. To begin with I would just search through the shelves of second hand book shops for the recognisable spines and buy any I deemed aesthetic enough.
After a while I began to know the designers names and there was one name I became a little bit obsessed with. This was the Polish born Romek Marber, who was employed by Penguin on a freelance basis, and mainly to produce cover designs for the famous green coloured crime fiction novels. It transpired that Marber was actually the designer who devised the horizontal banding layout that Penguin book design is famous for, but he never truly received the praise that he was due.
The covers work more than just an illustration of the novel but as a graphic clue to the content that is only revealed once the book had been read.
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