BIRD IN HAND
Print, LIX:II, May/June 2005
author: Richard Doubleday

During his Reign at Penguin Books, Jan Tschichold ruled the Composition Room with an Iron Fist, A Rubber Stamp, and a Demand for Exemplary Classical Design.

In the years following World War II, book publishers in Europe sought the best typographic talent and offered designers unparalleled artistic freedom. When Penguin Books publisher Allen Lane brought in Jan Tschichold to be the company’s typographer, he may not have expected that his new hire would set the standard for successful book design in Britain over the course of the next three years. Tschichold’s redesign of Penguin Books in the late 1940s revolutionized typographic conventions.
By the time Tschichold arrived at Penguin’s Middlesex office from Switzerland in March 1947, paperbacks had become a popular form of mass media, and Penguin Books had proven its success in providing the general public with a wide range of affordable, easily attainable, and exceptional literature. The design of Penguin Books’ titles, however, fell far short of the firm’s literary reputation. Before Tschichold’s arrival, composition guidelines and standards were virtually nonexistent at the company, as the production department depended on different sets of house rules supplied by various printers. In addition, only one typeface, Times New Roman, was being used throughout the whole collection.
Tschichold decided to establish a practical look for Penguin that would suit a large number of books and achieve balance and consistency. In his view, adherence to the tenets of traditional typography – legibility, a balance of type styles, wide margins, exquisite contrast, simplicity, and integrated rules and ornaments – was integral to a book’s function. For example, he preferred classical typefaces for long pages of text, noting, “Good typography has to be perfectly legible and is, as such, the result of intelligent planning. The classical typefaces such as Garamond, Janson, Baskerville, and Bell are undoubtedly the most legible.”[1]
Tschichold had first begun to pull away from his deep connections with “The New Typography” and the “functional” principles of the Bauhaus while designing books in Switzerland between 1933 and 1946. He realized then that symmetrical and asymmetrical typographic treatments could fulfill the requirements of successful book design. As he stated in a 1959 lecture at the Type Directors Club in New York City: “Obeying good rules of composition and book design in the manner of traditional typography is not ‘putting the clock back,’ but an eccentric style of setting is almost always debatable.”[2]
Tschichold’s work at Swiss book publisher Benno Schwabe in the early 1930s foreshadowed his work at Penguin. The standard house rules he established and enforced there, addressing word and letter spacing, leading, punctuation, and spelling, were a foundation for the composition rules at Penguin. The practical, symmetric house style Tschichold set for Birkhäuser Classics at Basel’s Birkhäuser Verlag was similar to his design approach at Penguin as well. Although they were produced for a mass market, Birkhäuser titles showcased high production values and lavish embellishments, such as patterned paper and covers made of linen or leather. His work for Sammlung Birkhäuser Collection, the publisher’s series of classic editions, established a house style using black and one other color on unbleached paper; ornate patterns; and all uppercase typography on three or four lines, with a thin rule separating the title from the publisher’s name – elements that can be seen in titles produced later at Penguin.

THE PENGUIN COMPOSITION RULES
Once at Penguin, Tschichold began to address the titles’ design weaknesses by circulating written comments and criticisms about existing covers to the editorial staff. He then developed the “Penguin Composition Rules,” the standardized formats and typographic specifications relating to text composition, indenting, punctuation marks, spelling, capitals, small capitals, italics, folios, figures, references, footnotes, makeup, and the printing of plays and poetry. The Penguin Composition Rules, which ran to four pages, unified the design of the numerous series while bringing harmony and economy to Penguin’s publishing program.
Underlying these rules was the implementation of a grid system. The grids were unalterable instructions that set the foundation for the trimmed page area, width and height of each book, visual cover size, type area on cover and spine, position and style of the spine label, and lettering on labels for the entire Penguin series. The grid gave Tschichold the flexibility to create appropriate scale relationships between type size and the dimensions of each book, to initiate a maximum area and correct imposition for any King Penguin plate (for the company’s nonfiction titles), and to designate the typeface that would most accurately reflect the content of the book.
After establishing these design standards, Tschichold had the responsibility of explaining them to the large group of Penguin Books compositors and printers, many of whom were less than enthusiastic about the intensified level of scrutiny and outside involvement in their work. Tschichold’s presence was most clearly felt in the publisher’s composing rooms, which he visited often to make arduous revisions to typographical arrangements and layouts. As Tschichold later reflected, “Every day I had to wade through miles of corrections (often ten books daily). I had a rubber stamp made: ‘Equalize letter-spaces according to their visual value.’ It was totally ignored; the hand compositors continued to space out the capitals on title-pages (where optical spacing is essential) with spaces of equal thickness.”[3] Despite initial resistance, Tschichold persisted, and after about a year, he began to see improvements. He could then turn his full energies toward the actual design of the books.

THE PENGUIN SERIES
One of Tschichold’s first design tasks was to refine the Penguin series covers. All of the existing design elements – the golden section proportions 4 3/8" x 7 1/8" (111mm x 181mm), color-coding by genre, sans serif typographic covers, and bird logo – were based on that of Albatross Books, a Hamburg-based imprint that set the standard for early paperback publishing by recognizing that design could be used as an effective form of branding. Although Tschichold was prevented by his publisher from completely redesigning the Penguin series – as he would have preferred – he did what he could to modify the existing “Penguin look.” This design was in large part defined by the distinguishing orange horizontal stripes developed by Edward Young, the company’s first production editor.
In 1948, Tschichold’s first revision included the introduction of different weights of Monotype Gill Sans for hierarchy and emphasis, meticulous letter and word spacing for both the title and author’s name, and a warmer tone of the original orange color. Said Tschichold on his design strategy: “I could only bring the earlier ugly proportions into a happier relationship.” [4] For the second revision, Tschichold redesigned the Penguin logo at the bottom center of the front jacket. He also reduced the point size of the typography and introduced a four-point line between the title and author’s name. What he did retain was Penguin’s characteristic text-centric covers and color-coding by genre – orange for fiction, green for crime, blue for biography, burgundy for travel, gray for current affairs, and yellow for miscellany.
Tschichold’s final revision of the Penguin cover in 1949 began with modifying the Penguin Books trademark. He corrected the letter spacing and reduced its overall size for improved proportion. He then decreased the line between the title and author’s name to two points and also introduced two hairline border rules above and below the title and author’s name. These final revisions firmly established a standardized format, which unified the Penguin series.

THE KING PENGUIN SERIES
The King Penguin series, which covered the subjects of art, science, leisure, and world history, was one of the first series to be printed in hardcover and in color by Penguin Books. Tschichold decided that the overall redesign of the King Penguins would emulate the prominent and much admired Insel-Verlag picture books from Germany. Each book numbered approximately 64 pages, with an equal distribution of text and images. The appearance was classic and elegant. At 4 3/4" x 7 1/16" (119mm x 179mm), they were smaller and sold at twice the price of paperback Penguin books. For King Penguins, Tschichold used unconventional classic typefaces such as Pastonchi, Scotch Roman, Lutetia, and Walbaum.
Of particular note in the King Penguin series is A Book of Scripts by Alfred Fairbank. Tschichold adapted the cover design from a page in Arte Subtilissima lntitulada OrthographiaPractica, a classic work on calligraphy and engraving by the 16th-century Spanish writing master Juan de Yçiar. Tschichold was concerned with the quality of reproductions, particularly when it involved calligraphy and exquisite lettering. For A Book of Scripts, he employed his early training as a calligrapher to hand-draw the roman capitals on the front and back covers, meticulously restoring them to their original shapes. The National Book League recognized this title as one of the best-designed books of 1949.
As this example shows, once Tschichold’s design principles were firmly established, he had time to concentrate on the character of each book and add his personal esthetic touch. Tschichold’s tenure at Penguin, during which he designed or prepped for press 500 elegant books – sometimes one a day – was a significant chapter in his career. Overseeing editors, compositors, binders, and printers, he could claim to be the first typographer to design and manage the mass production of books on such a wide-ranging scale.

BACK TO SWITZERLAND
Tschichold resolved to return to Switzerland in December 1949, having felt that his work at Penguin Books was complete, coupled with the substantial drop in the value of the English pound. His last task for the firm was recommending Hans Schmoller from the Curwen Press as his successor. Tschichold’s design assistant, Erik Ellegaard Frederiksen, left Penguin on the same day as his mentor but returned to the publisher in February 1950 to help ease Schmoller’s transition into his new job.
In this post-Tschichold phase, the tradition of typographic excellence in book design continued unabated at Penguin Books. As Penguin’s production director, Schmoller maintained and built upon the design standards and composition rules implemented by Tschichold. During his 25-year tenure, Schmoller carefully modified and adapted the composition rules to reflect the continuous technological developments in the publishing and printing industry. Tschichold commented on his successor: “I am also glad that my work is being well taken care of by H. P. Schmoller, a first-class book designer, and its fundamental lines can now hardly be altered.”[5]
Late in his career, Tschichold reflected on his experience and efforts at Penguin Books. “I could be proud,” he wrote, “of the million Penguin books for whose typography I was responsible. Beside them, the two or three luxurious books I have designed are of no importance. We do not need pretentious books for the wealthy, we need more really well-made ordinary books.”[6]

Fusnote
[1] Jan Tschichold, “Glaube und Wirklichkeit," Schweizer Graphische Mitteilungen, June, 1946.
[2] Jan Tschichold's lecture to The Type Directors Club, New York, April 18,1959. PRINT, January /February, 1964.
[3] Ruari McLean, Jan Tschichold: Typographer (David R. Godine, 1975).
[4] Letter to Ruari McLean, Esq., British Printer, May 12,1975.
[5] Ruari McLean, Jan Tschichold: Typographer (David R. Godine, 1975).
[6]Jost Hochuli, editor, Jan Tschichold, Typographer and Type Designer, 1902-1574. The English translation of this exhibition catalog is by Ruari McLean, W. A. Kelly, and Bernard Wolpe (Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 1982).