MINIMAL PACKAGING - Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication

Photographs taken from my Packaging Pinterest board.

PENGUIN book covers

PENGUIN was founded in 1935 with the concept of producing inexpensive paperback editions of high quality books. The book covers have a progressive approach to typography and design.


An office junior Edward Young was sent out to sketch penguins at the London zoo for the logo, before designing the first 10 paperbacks. The publisher Allen Lane considered illustrated book covers to be trashy, insisting on his following of a simple horizontal grid for Penguin jackets in colours that signified the genre for each book:
Orange= fiction
Green=crime
Blue=biography.


In the mid 1940's Jan Tschichold's legendary cover designs were made, using his own template for all Penguin books.



By the 60's a new art director was in charge, and the Penguin designs lost their style and edge.

Sans Serif (Type Classification Series)

Sans Serif: Typefaces without serifs, these became more popular in the 20th Century, with development in Germany based on geometric forms. There are many different classifications including:

• Humanist: Modeled/Developed on Old Style typefaces, with open strokes and a higher contrast in strokes when compared to regular sans serif type. Example - Gill Sans.

• Transitional: Similar to Transistional serifed typefaces, with upright axis and regular stroke. Example - Helvetica.

• Geometric: Based on geometric forms. In some cases such as the lowercase 'o' are perfect geometric forms/circles. Example - Futura.

Decorative (Type Classification Series)

These typefaces are often developed for a specific purpose/uses and are often better in big point sizes, because their legibility can decrease when decreasing type size, hence they are popular for headlines, billboards and posters. Many decorative typefaces are hand-drawn, while 'decorative' is more of a general term rather than a classification.
Example - Cuba

Pixel (Type Classification Series)

Pixel typefaces are based on computer inventions and technology, from their pixelated display. They are often called Bitmap fonts, and are usually made for a specific point size. Example - FFF Urban

Script (Type Classification Series)

Originally made from flexible brushes or pen, these typefaces are based on handwriting. The broadest classifications are formal script and casual script. Formal script is based on the 17th/18th Century handwriting. Casual script developed in the 20th Century phototypesetting, as a result of using a wet pen rather than a pen nib. 

Example - Bickham Script

 

Serif (Type Classification Series)

Serif typefaces were popular long before sans serif with somewhat structural details, often referred to as feet. There are many classifications for these typefaces, however the main ones are:

• OLD STYLE - The Old Style/Humanist serif typefaces were developed in the 16th Century and are characterised by the contrast of low stroke weight against angled serifs. Example - Garamond.

• TRANSISTIONAL - Between Old Style and Modern, it has more vertical axis with sharper serifs. Example - Baskerville.

• MODERN - Developed in the 18th/19th Century and have high a high contrast of strokes, straight serifs and vertical axis. Example - Bodini

• EGYPTIAN - Also known as slab serifed typefaces, these have heavy serifs used for decoration and headings, as the heavy serifs decrease legibility at smaller point sizes. Example - Rockwell.