Type Club of Toronto

Things magazine has just posted an amazing chronological gallery of historical Pelican books covers, called The Pelican Project. Pelican was a branch of Penguin Books added in 1937 to “cover serious contemporary issues” such as History, Sociology, Economics and Politics.

To see the scope of the covers, spanning 6 decades with as many as 25 jackets in certain years, is incredible. The posted collection runs from The Floating Republic by Dobrée & Manwaring, in 1937 to An Outline of European Architecture by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1985. It also includes a 1945 cover for Ask Me Another by Hubert Phillips under the short-lived Ptarmigan imprint. The 1960s are by far the least formal and most interesting of the covers, especially in context to the 48 years of this imprint displayed here.

The images above are from, in order - 1937, 1945, 1947,1957, 1960, 1968, 1970, & 1985

From Edward Young (37-47), Jan Tschichold (46-49), Hans Schmoller (50-60), Germano Facetti (61-72), Romek Marber (62-68) to David Pelham (68-80); there were a very talented set of designers working for founder Allen Lane until his death in 1970 and even after the sale of Penguin to Pearson in the same year.

Whether a Designer, a Reader or just a Book Lover, it’s a wonderful nostalgic browse through an important piece of history. Things magazine was originally founded in 1994 by a group of writers and historians based at the Victoria & Albert Museum/Royal College of Art in the belief that objects can open up new ways of understanding the world. Kudos to them for doing just that. I look forward to their expansion of the project.