penguin commission

The Caseroom Press were recently commissioned by Penguin Books to contribute to the Penguin Red Classics series — Each of the covers in the two sets is a typographic response to a quote that captures the core of the narrative.

This a huge commission and a great honour for us, and obviously that meant we spent the first month being too terrified to work — thanks go to David Pearson at this point for his wonderful advice to ‘just be yourself, that’s why they commissioned you’.

So — that’s what we did. Our quote ‘I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy’ led us to focus on the fundamental difference between the sexes. The XX and XY chromosome. This allowed us to use some of the more dramatic letterforms in our Wood Type sets and also the more delicate of our metal collection.

Oh, and as we were still worried about it we took Chip Kidd’s words to heart too. We made it big and we made it red.

Other designs in the series are by FUEL, Nathan Burton, Studio Frith, Grey318, Non-Format, Jim Stoddart, Coralie Bickford-Smith, Stefanie Posavec and Marion Bantjes. More information about the series can be found on the Penguin Books website:  http://www.penguinclassics.co.uk/static/minisites/red/index.html

Categorised in: book release

This post was written by caseroom2020