posted on 01 Jun 2017

Puffin By Design: 70 Years of Imagination 1940-2010 by Phil Baines

I can hardly believe this wonderful book is now almost seven years old. It’s one of those beautiful publications I find myself picking up and spending a relaxing hour browsing through. And this is made possible because it offers you a double-whammy – it’s a lovely book, wonderfully put together in its own right and it’s subject is the creation of some of the most evocative children’s book cover design in the English language.

This is no dry or overly-meticulous chronicling of the history of Puffin books – yes, there’s a brief history here but Baines essentially lets the book covers do all the work. By grouping a cornucopia of examples into a chronological sequence we can see the creative evolution of the imprint.

Unlike Penguin books, Puffin’s parent company, these children’s books haven’t been saddled with a rigid cover design format. That’s not to say there isn’t a broad template; there is and it makes a Puffin immediately recognisable; but it’s loose and unobtrusive, allowing the cover illustrator to dominate the jacket.

The decision to commission some of the most brilliant children’s book illustrators, often early in their career before they establish themselves as a name in their own right with their own titles, meant that Puffin often had a seemingly endless supply of fabulous editions that burned their way into the consciousness of their young readers. The instant sense of nostalgia that a Puffin can create just by looking at the cover is almost legendary.

The care given to the cover design was genuinely awesome. Not only did the illustrator have freedom to produce the kind of illustration they felt worked best for the book, for the first couple of decades the cover calligraphy was also done by hand – it wasn’t until the mid-60s that a mechanised typographic process was introduced.

What this book also shows us is that design never stays still – it’s constantly evolving to be able to speak to new generations of children. I’m of an age that thinks of the Puffins of the 60s and 70s as the ‘golden age’ but I also recognise that this is a very personal construct. The design of more recent Puffins does look very different but they are, nonetheless, capable of speaking directly to the children of the new generation.

The lavish and superb illustrations in this book are a constant delight – they emphasis the fact that book covers when they are designed by great illustrators are works of art in their own right. However often your look through the pages of a book you’ll always find something new and stimulating.

Copies of this book – it was originally published in a stiffish card cover with a removable dust jacket – can be found for under £12 on the second hand market. It’s a must.

 

Terry Potter

June 2017