Those beautiful covers from Penguin

What better way for a publisher to celebrate it's 75th anniversary than to come up with a retrospective of some of its memorable cover designs, no? Penguin did exactly just that, coming out with a visually stunning book on some of their covers with commentaries from the author, the designer, and the creative director.

Buying this book was a no-brainer for me. It's no secret that I'm a Penguin junkie. And I was curious as to the actual process that goes with the generation of Penguin's beautiful covers.

Penguin 75, which is edited by no less than Penguin's Executive Vice President Creative Director Paul Buckley, is a very eye-opening book. It shows you the interesting dynamic between the author and the creative team. Some of the stories included in the book are quite funny actually. Below, I picked a few from the 75 books contained in this collection.

The author, Jim Powell, thought that this cover was brilliant.

The designer had a different opinion though,

saying that the yellow he used looked a bit washed out. 

This cover is just too beautiful.

The elements (i.e., the portrait, the tree, the dark atmosphere)

work really well in telling you about the books of these 3 Bronte sisters. 

The small leftmost image is the hardback cover,

and the small red one is the rejected paperback cover.

For the approved paperback design, the designer simply used the 

image of the original cover, which was an actual photo.

I've never read a Durrell.

But these designs want me to head to the bookstore

and buy all these copies. 

The cover for Gilbert's nonfiction work was hell to work on.

They had to do the photo shoot twice because of poor lighting.

And the petals used to form 'love' easily wilted, so they had to work fast. 

The estate of Ian Fleming wanted no female nudes nor images of 

James Bond when Penguin was designing this series.

However, they did manage to sneak in a couple of naked women. 

The designer of The Canterbury Tales wanted a design 

that wouldn't come off as boring.

He actually wants the readers to guess the characters 

he placed on the cover. 

I think this is very edgy, yes?

What comes to your mind when you see 

a teddy bear shagging a doll?

The designer was somewhat concerned that the pink color used 

for the transvestite sleuth in this mystery series might seem offensive.

Good thing that they decided to stick with it, as the cover is quite arresting. 

Sometimes, all one needs for a captivating design 

are a solid color and beautiful typography. 

Penguin is particularly proud of their Penguin Classics,

which is the line that they're famous for.

But because of the limited print-runs for these titles,

all these designs are done in-house. 

This is one of my favorites.

The images used are perfect for the title. 

William T. Vollman sent this waiver and invoice to Penguin

when he photographed 3 prostitutes for the cover of his book below.

 They had to hide the prostitutes' faces because of 

legal issues.

In the cover on the right, notice the man who seems to be 

running away from something.

Penguin actually used one of the designers 

to serve as a model (small leftmost image).

Beautiful illustrations used in one of Penguin's short story anthologies