Classic Penguin: Cover To Cover

Description

In celebration of the 70th anniversary of Penguin Classics, Classic Penguin: Cover To Cover showcases over ten years of stunning cover designs. It begins with the now-iconic redesign of the black spine Penguin Classics series, and moves through award-winning series like Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxes and Penguin Drop Caps. Curated by Creative Director Paul Buckley, this is a perfect book for Classics lovers, art students and design fans, providing a valuable and illuminating behind-the-scenes look at books that are studied as much for their covers as for their content.

Paul Buckley is one of the premiere creative directors working today, overseeing a diverse group of designers and art directors creating exceptional book covers and branding for fifteen imprints and countless authors within the Penguin Random House publishing group. For the past two decades, his iconic design and singular art direction has been showcased on thousands of covers and jackets, winning him many awards and frequent invitations to speak in the United States and abroad. Paul lives in Brooklyn with his wife Ingsu Liu. Audrey Niffenegger is a visual artist and a guide at Highgate Cemetery. In addition to the bestselling novels The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, she is the author of three illustrated novels and the editor of Ghostly. She lives in Chicago. Elda Rotor (Preface) is the associate publisher and editorial director for Penguin Classics. She has created and edited several series including Penguin Civic Classics, Penguin Threads, Couture Classics, Penguin Horror, and Penguin Drop Caps.

"Over the last dozen years or so, this pioneering publisher has exploded every notion of what a paperback should look like(...) You can read, study or just ooh and aah at these kaleidoscopic pages." -Michael Dirda, The Washington Post "This gorgeous collection of the most recent wave of near-instant-classic Penguin covers is the second-best thing to actually owning the books themselves." -RedEye "Cover to Cover, a new book from Penguin Classics, is the closest I can get to looking at pornography in the office." -Dana Schwartz, The Observer "Beautiful, strange, dark, simple, and abstract-the covers you'll find in the book run the gamut of styles and creativity...[On Sherlock Holmes: The Novels] Steering away from the usual deerstalker hat and pipe, illustrator Adam Simpson not only created a scene straight out of 1890s London, but he includes little gems tucked in on this wraparound cover that depict an iconic scene from each of the four stories contained within...[On The Penguin Drop Caps] If there is ever a series to make a book lover itch to have them all, it's this one...[On The Pelican Shakespeare series]: These are the freshest and most appealing Shakespeare covers I've personally ever seen. I might've kept my copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet from college if they'd looked like these." -Seira Wilson, Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review "A publishing company that certainly takes pride in its design history, this collection in particular is a delight because it's a recent history that makes it feel both current and timeless; a revamped series that has met with a great deal of well-deserved success. The book does an excellent job of laying out and explaining just how it's managed to do so in such a short amount of time." -J.M. Suarez, PopMatters "Edited by Penguin Creative Director Paul Buckley, Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover delivers 288 pages of literary eye candy. Both bibliophiles and design buffs will be enthralled by the book, which features hundreds of stunning covers paired with commentary by the artists. Topped off with gorgeous, inventive layouts by Matt Vee, this tome is a must-have for book lovers." -Paste Magazine