2024/25 brief

Create a new design system for paperback books, encapsulating the spirit of Penguin’s founding design principles

To celebrate 90 years of Penguin book design, the Cover Design Award is excited to announce a special one-off brief, crafted by our Brand team and Art Directors.

What characterises Penguin’s design story?

“… the books had a happy combination of novelty and familiarity: they evoked something fresh and modern, while not being so rarefied or ‘moderne’ as to discourage the customer from picking them up.” Commenting on the Penguin tri-band design, Fifty Penguin Years, 1985. 

The appearance of the first ten Penguin paperbacks in 1935 marked a step change in the way that the British public read. Through a combination of commercial need and daring design ambition, founder Allen Lane and designer Edward Young pursued an accessible and replicable approach to book design:

Bold: Penguin’s books pushed at the edges of graphic design, a discipline that was at the beginning of a dramatic ascent when Penguin’s first paperbacks were released in 1935. The format was unafraid of bucking the more traditional decorative and illustrative conventions of book design, but the approach was not without criticism.

Distinctive: packaging journal Shelf Appeal described Lane’s paperbacks in 1937 as having put the “selling in bookselling”. The bold, type-forward jackets with their colour-coded genre system stood out on the bookcase and were no doubt a contributor to Penguin selling 3,000,000 books in its first year.

Mass-market: Penguin paperbacks were designed to be produced at scale, replicable and affordable for readers. Each paperback cost only sixpence – the same price as a pack of cigarettes in 1935. Rather than approaching the brief with a view to creating separate jackets for the first ten books, Edward Young devised a flexible system in which everything from crime and general fiction to essays and biography could live. It was a system that would survive the paper and ink rationing of WWII, and whose echoes are still seen in some elements of publishing today.

The Brief

Create a new design system for paperback books, encapsulating the spirit of Penguin’s 3 founding design principles listed above. We want this design system to accommodate the breadth and diversity of contemporary publishing today. 

Once you have created your design system, please show its use across three of these books:

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes
Killing Floor by Lee Child
Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Remember, we’re not looking for three book covers with individual styles.

We want to see your design system used by three of the book titles above, to show it can work across multiple genres and time periods, just like the tri-band was used in 1935.

What and how to submit

For submission, we are asking for three book design spreads using your new design system for Penguin.

Use the Penguin standard paperback template provided which will give you the correct sizing (B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine width 20mm)
The Penguin logo has to appear on the front cover and spine, although you can decide where and how it is displayed. You will also need include the barcode.

Please refer to the submission details page for full details on how to submit your entry. 

Copyright must be cleared for all images used in your cover design and you must include a credit line on the back cover of your design for any third-party images used; for example: ‘Cover photograph by Joe Bloggs’. 

The Prizes

1st Prize 

The first prize winner will receive a six-month-long mentorship programme with a member of the Penguin Art Department (dates to be confirmed). They will also receive a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium tablet and Penguin Random House design books to the value of £100. 

2nd Prize 

The second-prize winner will receive a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium tablet and Penguin Random House design books to the value of £100. 

3rd Prize 

The third-prize winner will receive a Wacom Intuos Medium tablet and Penguin Random House design books to the value of £100. 

The Judges

Richard Bravery - Art Director, Penguin General

Richard studied Illustration at Falmouth and has an MA in Typography from London College of Printing. After graduating Richard worked in a variety of creative industries including Furniture Design, before embarking on a career in Cover Design firstly at 4th Estate and then with Penguin, where he has worked since 2007. As Art Director for Penguin General, he works on a wide-ranging list of authors including Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, John le Carré and Alain De Botton.  

Jim Stoddart - Art Director, Penguin Press

After graduating in Sheffield, Jim took a placement at Bill Smith Studio in London, which turned into a job designing record and CD covers for such labels as EMI, Virgin, BMG, Mute and Trojan Records. Five years later he joined Penguin, where he worked as a cover designer for eighteen months, and then he went to work with Chris Ashworth under Lewis Blackwell at Getty Images for twelve months. In 2001 he returned to Penguin as Art Director of Penguin Press, where he has overseen the redesign and rebranding of Penguin Classics, Penguin Modern Classics and Pelican Books, as well as designing and art-directing covers for Penguin’s Allen Lane hardback imprint, the Particular Books imprint and Penguin non-fiction paperbacks.

Guest judges

To be announced