Marber Grid Research

Marber Grid


In 1961 Romek Marber created the grid layout for Penguin book covers which became one of the most praised and recognised layout of all time.
Before the Marber grid Penguin books used a simple typographic cover for their publications until being impressed by Marber's designs.
Marber was careful to consider all aspects of the original penguin covers when designing his own. He managed to collate the typographic information and the colophon together in the top third of the page leaving over two thirds of the cover to be used for imagery. This would help the books to catch the attention of the public more. Soon after the designs were created and put forward they became the standard layout for the penguin books.

Romek Marber Timeline design:

As part of the brief and using the information that I found out about Romek Marber I created a timeline of his life that would go on the inside cover of my book cover designs. I decided to use the barbed wire as the timeline to follow as I thought that it was more interesting than just using a straight line and it also had some relevance to his life as he spend time as a soldier in World War 2. To make the timeline more interesting, I also added different pictograms that related to each bit of information. This helped for the timeline to be more eye catching. I used the same typeface as the book cover designs which I created as it showed consistency across the whole of the designs.