Hasta La Ideas

Penguin is due to release its next big themed series in April. This time the focus is on Great Food with covers based on ceramic styles

The 20 books bring together “the sharpest, funniest, most delicious writing about food from the past 400 years,” according to Penguin. We will be publishing a more in-depth review of the series in a forthcoming edition but, for now, here are advance copies of the first three in the series.

The covers were designed by the Penguin’s senior cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. Each one draws on a decorative ceramic style relevant to the period of the writing concerned.

Cover for Love in a Dish and other pieces by MFK Fisher. Cover design based on a pattern from a Century side plate by Eva Zeisel for Hallcraft, 1957

The covers feature embossed lettering and spot varnishes to pick out the details of the illustrations. Note also the special version of the Penguin logo, cutlery at the ready. Bickford-Smith worked closely with picture editor Samantha Johnson and lettering artist Stephen Raw on the series.

Cover for Everlasting Syllabub and the Art of Carving by Hannah Glasse. Cover design based on a pattern from a plate by the Bow Porcelain Factory, 1770.

Cover for Exciting Food for Southern Types by Pellegrino Artusi. Cover design based on a pattern from a bowlby Ulisse Cantagalli, Florence, 1892.

The Penguin Great Food will be published in Penguin Paperback on April 7, priced £6.99 each.

RELATED CONTENT

Last year Penguin teamed up with RED to produce new covers for eight Penguin classics, which we reported on here.

Penguin 75: the stories behind the covers reveals some of the secrets behind Penguin’s cover designs. Read about it here.

Penguin on Design series.

Penguin by Illustrators book.

CR in print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog, but if you’re not reading us in print too, you’re missing out on a richer, deeper view of your world. Our Type Annual issue has 100 pages of great content, featuring the best typefaces of the year and great writing from Rick Poynor, Jeremy Leslie, Eliza Williams and Gavin Lucas. It’s printed on four different, beautiful heavyweight paper stocks and offers a totally different experience to the Blog. You can buy it today by calling +44(0)207 292 3703 or go here to buy online. Better yet, subscribe to CR, save yourself almost a third and get Monograph for free plus a host of special deals from the CR Shop. Go on, treat yourself.

We’re just going to press on our March issue which will include a rather nice edition of Monograph featuring the pictograms of Gerd Arntz (proofs shown above)

Arntz’s career as both a collaborator with Otto Neurath on the Isotype project and as a politically-engaged imagemaker in his own right will be explored by the RCA’s David Crowley in a lengthy profile in the issue (coinciding with this excellent book on Arntz). In addition, subscribers will be able to enjoy a selection of Arntz’s beautifully-drawn pictograms in our Monograph booklet.

You can only get Monograph, our 20-page A5 booklet which comes with CR every month, if you are a subscriber. If you haven’t yet subscribed and would like the Arntz Monograph, it’s not too late. You can subscribe here and will receive March (including the Arntz Monograph) as your first issue.

Monograph (current issue shown below) won a Silver at the 2008 Art Directors Club Awards and has also been featured in the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year show.

Loro sono lo studio BAG di Barcellona.

Illustrator and animator Elliott Quince has taken the rather unusual route of expressing Valentine’s Day sentiment with a series of new illustrations of love crazed zombies, suitably gouged via the medium of linocut…

“With the 14th of February just around the corner, I wanted to give the general public a Valentine’s card option that didn’t centre around flowers, teddy bears and hearts,” explains Quince, “but instead had a theme that was slightly different but no less romantic – in an alternative sense of the word,” he continues.

The illustrations will adorn Valentine’s Day cards that sadly won’t be available to buy this year, but rather will appear in a self promotional pack that the artist is currently sending out to ADs and art buyers.

See more of Quince’s work at quinkyart.com

Manchester-based Design by Day have produced the identity and marketing materials for a new show on the subject of fame at the city’s Cornerhouse arts centre; The People You’re Not

The show features work by Mancunian artist Edward Barton and ‘infamous balladeer’ Norman Clayture as well as comedian Harry Hill’s proposal To recreate George Cruikshank’s the worship of Bacchus using known alcoholics, as realised by six illustrators (which sounds intriguing to say the least).

Design by Day say their work for the show features “a sinister mix of fame caricatures and freakish body parts … We took inspiration from the artists and work to develop the identity for the exhibition, and produced a typographic side-show exposing the austere dark reality of getting caught up in the carousel journey of fame.”

As well as the posters, there is a trailer for the show which will run on the Cornerhouse’s cinema screens and online

Design by Day also worked on the Cornerhouse’s previous show on Artists & Cinema, Unspooling.

See more of their work here