Founded in 2003 by the esteemed editor Ann Godoff, Penguin Press is an imprint of Penguin that publishes literary fiction and quality non-fiction by a distinguished list of authors that includes Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith, Ron Chernow, John Berendt, Michael Pollan and Errol Morris, among many others. Pentagram has designed a new identity for Penguin Press that establishes an iconic symbol for the imprint. The designers previously developed the brand identity for Penguin Random House, Penguin's parent company.
The designers worked closely with Penguin Press on the development of the new mark. The existing identity aimed for elegance but largely disappeared on the bookshelf, where the logo’s delicate design of three lines of light, spaced-out serif italic typography, framed with four horizontal lines, had trouble holding its own against the more graphic competition. The wordmark was almost illegible when reproduced at smaller sizes and particularly suffered onscreen, a liability in the age of social media.
Penguin Press needed something simpler and more authoritative. With the publisher’s blessing, the designers dropped the “The” and focused on working with the “PP” acronym, which is actually a difficult pair of letters to work with. The team soon recognized the similarity to ¶, the proofreader’s symbol for a paragraph, which is called a pilcrow and consists of two “P”s in reverse. Using the same configuration provided a concise acronym that evoked the essence of what publishers sell: words turned into sentences turned into paragraphs.
The identity utilizes the font Balto Light, designed by Tal Leming. The lowercase “g” has been customized with a flat ear, to better complement the flat x-height of the wordmark. The identity has started appearing on book jackets and promotions, and is featured as a pattern on the Penguin Press Winter 2015 catalog.
