The Penguin aesthetic has undergone something of a self-guided, if self-conscious, revival in recent years. As the Pelican Project linked above makes abundantly clear, there is an undeniable visual unity when you're presented with a decade's worth of covers. The Penguin design story is straightforward, but much mythologised. As Robin Kinross notes in the Hyphen Press's excellent Journal, the company ultimately appears to have lost the plot, indulging in too much 'visual imitation and self-reference'. The Penguins and Pelicans themselves also tend to be much fetishised by contemporary designers - you just have to scour ffffound to see occasional appearances by 'classic' examples of the familiar dark blue cover art (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) jumbled up with the soup of spirited yet ultimately refined modernist taste that drives modern visual practice. We offer up the Pelican Project as more grist for the mill.

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Other things. Moderato, a literary weblog coming out of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina / poignant but fascinating question, what have we lost forever? (especially this response, related to the previous link, on the 'Sarajevo Haggadah (related New Yorker article)) / Silver Poetics, a photography weblog.

Phayung, an architecture weblog, hoovering up the cascade of built environment imagery / Commando Blog, fashion and things from Norway / SoCal Modern Residential, a flickr set / The Show So Far, a weblog / movie recommendations for toddlers / How to be useful, a blog (and book) by Megan Hustad.

Labels: design, typography

posted by things at 12:43 / 0 comments