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Jan Tschichold simplifies book sturcture

Penguin Readability Through Legibility

7 April 2018

€2.50

Interview with Kate James Check pg 6-7

Issue no. 1

LEGIBILITY THROUGH TRADITION Exclusive Penguin Books Introducing 80 Little Black Classics for Penguin’s 80th birthday Melissa D’Agostini Paperbacks Penguin books, first published in 1935, were the first mass-market paperback was produced in Britain. Penguin were republishing existing works of fiction and non-fiction to a higher standard. The books were mass produced to be cheap, and to be small and light in weight for people to travel with.

There are two standard book sizes within the paper back industry: A format: The original Penguin size, 181x111mm. B format 198 x 129 mm, first used by penguin in 1945 for Russian Review and widely used over the last twenty years. For certain series other sizes were introduced, for example a Puffin Picture Books were approximately double Penguin. Also, A5 (210 x 124 mm) has occasionally been used for the Pelican History of Art series.

Composition Rules Before Tschichold started working for Penguin, he had requested some of Penguin’s books for examination before starting any design projects for the company. He realised that there was a nonexistent compositions for their books. Therefore, when working at Penguin, Tschichold devel-

oped the “Penguin Composition Rules.”

These rules included; “composition, indenting, punctuation marks, spelling, capitals, small capitals, italics, folios, figures, references, footnotes, make-up, and the printing of plays and poetry.” Within the rules, there was an unalterable and fixed grid system. Setting up these rules created a cleaner look for the readers.

Horizontal Grid Tschichold’s reform on Penguin’s cover design did not involve a dramatic change; in fact they were subtle. Edward Young was the designer prior to Tschichold, and he designed the tripartite divisions for the cover. The horizontal panels were flexible in its measurements and at times the top and bottom coloured panels varied in height from book to book.

As with the pre-war covers, the horizontal grid was also adapted to allow for the inclusion of illustration. In 1951, the vertical grid appeared, and the horizontal grid was used occasionally, when appropriate.

Symmetrical Ideals Before working at Penguin Publishing Books, between 1933 and 1946, Tschichold realised that a “symmetrical typographic treatment could fulfil the requirements of successful book design and that asymmetrical compositions were less appropriate for the works of literature.”

Tschichold stated that centred typography was allowable. He believed that title pages with short lines of text were more aesthetically appealing when centred, and symmetrical setting were easier for

Penguin Logo, Above, refined by Jan Tschichold to its simplest form

compositors. He also believed that title pages were being neglected, and therefore he put more time and emphasis on the title pages to convey a solid first impression of the book. This is a contrast with his earlier claim that grids should not be “rational” when making a modernist book design. However, by changing his mind to return to traditional layout, it will make the work familiar to the readers, and even though he rejects mod-

‘Readers want what is important to be clearly laid out’

START YOUR COLLECTION Penguin Books Penguin and Random House came together in 2013 to form the world’s first truly global book publishing company.

Our purpose is to capture the attention of the world for the stories, ideas and writing that matter.

Penguincubator (1937), Above, Penguin Books vending machine

Vintage Penguin Poster, Above, promotion to read more penguin books

Penguin’s job is to lead the field, creating formats that bring ideas and stories to life in compelling and contemporary ways. From traditional printed books, ebooks and audio books to interactive apps, blockbuster films, TV shows, radio, theatre productions, live events and social media, the list is as vast as our imagination. Their books shape the broader cultural life of our society. Our readers’ tastes

are constantly changing: they are engaging with information in new and exciting ways. So we constantly think about the best means to share a story.

Visual Language Penguin designed a basic but bold colour coding system which had a function. They covers designs which was used for both functionality as well as aesthetics. They created a colour coding scheme which divided the different books into their different genres: orange for fiction, green for crime, blue for biography, burgundy for travel, yellow for miscellaneous, and grey for current affairs. This technique was used again for the colourful Pocket Penguins. The books were designed

to come in a range of striking colours.

The Standard Penguin Classics Colour Chart denotes a colour for each of the original languages that Penguin Classics were translated from. While some have remained the same (Russian, Italian and German) others, including Spanish and French, have new colours.

There are many different types of genres that penguin have produced. Try picking up a penguin and expand your Penguin collection.

Books vary in Prices.

Penguin Books start from €4.95

The Penguin Saturday 7 April 2018

6

Interview

‘There are 32 million adults in America who don’t have basic literacy skills’ Kate James

Interview Sam Baker (SB): I’m here in this amazing library at the Royal Institute with Kate James who is the chief Koper affairs and global marketing officer. Tell me more about her.

Interviewed by Sam Baker Project Literacy Project Literacy is building a movement to advocate for greater investment in literacy. One of the biggest challenges we face is lack of awareness. This is a global crisis, but people just don’t realize it’s happening or how devastating the consequences are. Illiteracy is behind all kinds of ills, from gender inequality and unemployment to malnutrition and infant mortality. It affects people of all ages, from every country in the world, limiting the potential of one out of every ten people on this planet.Project Literacy wants to make the problem more visible by increasing public awareness of illiteracy and encouraging a diverse set of people to take action to help.

Sixteen Project Literacy partners joined Pearson, the world’s learning company, to launch the petition and carry it to the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where 193 global leaders were attending the UN General Assembly. This petition calls upon the world’s leaders to acknowledge the urgency of the international illiteracy crisis and pledge to take meaningful action to address it.

Kate James Kate James, Chief Corporate Affairs and Global Marketing Officer for Pearson as well as Project Literacy spokesperson, said: “Illiteracy is one of the largest but least visible global humanitarian challenges. And we know the only way to put a dent in the 758 million people today without basic literacy skills is through the power of partnership - more than 90 partners are now actively supporting Project Literacy.”

Kate James (KJ): Two years ago we were really thinking what should we focus on. And we looked across a pretty crowded space in lots of areas and we focused on literacy. Really one key reason we saw that it was 758 million people today don’t have basic literacy skills. But what really fixated me was that over the last ten years despite a huge amount of great work in space that number wasn’t moving. And that’s what really made us think as a learning company that we had an opportunity where we could make a difference.

SB: Tell us about the Project Literacy lab.

KJ: So the lab is an accelerator. With the view of focusing on how to tackle literacy. And it’s bringing together 16 entrepreneurs who are all working very different global challenges. But all of them with a commitment to tackle literacy. They really are super diverse and some of them are very focused on as you’d expect direct education interventions. But what’s interesting is we also have companies like Afri pads for example that is totally focused on sanitary protection. And you know the reality is that 1 in 10 girls in Africa each day are dropping out of school because of the issue that they don’t have access to sanitary pads because it’s regarded as a luxury in our society.

SB: There are 750 million illiterate people globally. Two thirds of those are women. So do you think illiteracy affects women more than men?

KJ: Yeah I think this is because we’re not dealing with a level playing field. I mean we just talked about the example of sanitary pad protection but generally you know in terms of access to quality education I mean I think that is a challenge and I you know and then you start to look at what does that mean in terms of impact. And it means you know if you look in sub-Saharan Africa. If you can double illeteracy rates amongst women. Then their kids have a 30 percent better chance of living beyond the age of five. Which really brings it home to that when

Project Literacy, Above, poster promoting literacy

we’re talking about literacy we’re really talking about a global humanitarian crisis. And. I have really interesting because no one talks about it.

SB: Why do you think that is?

KJ: I think it’s because people aren’t necessarily making the connection between literacy and some of the big challenges whether we’re talking about infant mortality whether we’re talking about gender inequality whether we’re talking about poverty malnutrition.

If we’re really going to put a dent in that seven hundred fifty eight million why entrepreneurs. Here. Because I think as we sort of you know you I listen to the more present this afternoon they bring believable energy and passion to what they do. They’re brave at risk takers. And I think that really super agile you know they’re ideating all the time that we’re finding the ideas you know they’re just smart thinkers. And if one of the things for us that we really need to do is be able to increase our reach in some of the poorest communities in the world because that’s where the challenge illiteracy is most severe.

Saturday 7 April 2018 The Penguin

Interview

7

‘1 in 10 girls in Africa each day are dropping out of school because of the issue that they don’t have access to sanitary pads’ Kate James

These guys have real reach. You know the group that we’ve been talking to over the last couple of days since we met with them first and had our first silap with them 12 months ago they’ve increased their reach and their impact from four and a half million people to 10 million people. So who knows what they’re going to be able to achieve and you know another 12 months.

SB: So what’s the future for Project Literacy up?

KJ: So our committed to these entrepreneurs is to continue to work with them. And that’s a mix of mentoring and coaching and hopefully also connecting them with other smart individuals with investors or with ability to keep on enabling them to scale and have a bigger impact. And all return maintaining that commitment to literacy and then we’re going to have the next group of entrepreneurs are meeting with Oleksy lab this year to be held in the fall. when we look to Project Literacy and we were thinking about where we made the biggest impact. We thought about how we could share best practice to help scale. It’s all about the power of innovation and we go about raising awareness and awareness then leading to mobilizing action.

SB: Just finally what are the most exciting things you’re seeing happening in education and learning globally?

SB: So if we were to be sitting here in a year’s time, what would you like to be saying about Project Literacy Lab?

KJ: I mean education is incredible at the moment I mean like so many sectors were facing massive destruction. And I think digital is throwing up a phenomenal opportunity. You know we saw one of the entrepreneurs you know on on the program this week is Robbie AI which is looking at artificial intelligence. The next step in personalized learning is you can predict, you know, what the emotional reaction is; Is a kid engaged? Are they bored? Are they enfused? which you know enables a whole new step in terms of tailoring learning going forward and of course mobile technology it means that you’re no longer confined to thinking about schooling in terms of bricks and mortar.

KJ: I think what I’d like to say about Project Literacy is that we know that the Coalition hopefully is you know close to 500 partners because we have 100 now.

And when we think about the challenges we’ve got with for example refugee populations when the kids are dying nomadic their home schooling is super fragmented. Moe I’ll gives you that consistent opportunity. So whether it’s the work that we’re doing with. With world we do in India where they are using mobile technology to get parents and kids access to a digital library or a partnership with Save the Children where we’re devising mobile solutions for refugee kids to help supplement their learning in maths. I mean again it’s just opened up a whole new sort of avenue in terms of learning.

SB: As creating I’m going ask you one more question. Adult Literacy versus. Toddler 6 obviously making sure the children have a basic level of education and areas discussed is really really crucial to the future of the planet. But I thought that your thesis. It’s a different issue isn’t it?

KJ: Yeah and it’s really important because you all the data shows that it is an intergenerational part. So if parents were illiterate that likelihood of their children being illiterate is far greater. I think it’s also really important to recognize that it’s not just a problem of the developing world. You know there are 32 million adults in America who don’t have basic literacy skills which is hugely meditating. And the impact on a country’s economic progress never mind just thinking about the social impact on the individual the family is massive. They estimate that literacy is that you know a one point two trillion dollar problem.

I think the more we can do to raise awareness of the issue the more people also make the connection to the fact that literacy really is a fundamental component of the solution so many of these big development challenges we are talking about whether it’s malnutrition, whether it’s poverty, but we’ve got to you know really get up and tackle this and we can all make a difference so I think 500 partners. I thinkthat’s an unreasonable and as far as the lab goes you know, we’ve gone from four and a half to 10 million. We’re going to have another group of entrepreneurs. Now he thinks we can get 100 year feels ambitious but that’s what we got to we’ve got to aim for it.

SB: That’s brilliant. Thank you Kate.

KJ: Thank you.

The Penguin Saturday 7 April 2018

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