Pocket Penguins

The publication of 70 Pocket Penguins formed the centre piece of Penguin's 70th birthday celebrations. For each book, designer and writer were paired and given the task of taking the work to a new audience. Penguin's founder Allen Lane famously stated that, “good design costs no more than bad design.” The series was conceived as a celebration of Lane's democratisation not only of quality writing, but also of quality design. The birthday could have easily been about harking back to 1935, instead, by taking the essence of what made Penguin great and setting that in a modern context, the company was able to celebrate its design heritage through looking to the future rather than the past.