Puffin: At the cutting edge of cover design

THEIR covers were bright and vibrant, designed to entice and beguile youngsters. In contrast with the drab wartime environment, children found Puffin books to be colourful and magical explorations of the world.

They were a bold new collaboration between Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, and Noel Carrington, an editor and producer of books for Country Life. Lane had brought cheap paperback editions of high-calibre literature to the masses and Carrington wanted to launch a series of well-illustrated books to explain everything from history and geography to camping and ballet to children.

The books had to be economical to produce and cost sixpence to buy. War was about to break out, paper was expensive, but a low-cost printing technique called autolithography (in which the artist drew or traced with a brush and pen directly onto a zinc plate) kept overheads low.

The earliest Puffin books explained aspects of the war, with 13 titles published in the first two years despite paper shortages and lack of skilled labour. Allen Lane astutely turned next to a series on the natural world, aimed at city children evacuated to the countryside.

The books were well illustrated but not at all dumbed down for their young audience, and they were a runaway success. Their exciting covers clearly differentiated them from the three-stripe design of parent company, Penguin.

In the early 1940s two new Orlando books were published as Puffin Picture Books, and the publisher was looking at a wholesale step into children's story books.

With the help of Eleanor Graham, the woman who was to create a revolution in children's reading, the Story Book range was launched.

Graham was revolutionary in many ways but she wasn't always right and had a few fixed ideas. She was willing to publish only titles she felt had "lasting worth", and works by Enid Blyton and JRR Tolkein were not seen as worthy of Puffin, although CS Lewis did meet with her approval.

In the early 1960s, theatre critic and children's magazine editor Kaye Webb was appointed senior editor at Puffin. Her masterstroke was the creation of the Puffin Book Club, with its enamel badge, secret code, competitions and regular Puffin Post magazine which carried articles by leading authors, spoke directly to children and encouraged them to read.

Puffin knew how to take children seriously and value their loyalty, says Phil Baines, professor of typography at Central St Martin's University of the Arts, London and author of Puffin by Design – 70 Years of Imagination 1940-2010, a beautiful study of the design, typography and illustration of titles enjoyed by generations of children.

"Puffin also really acknowledged the power and importance of illustration and was the first to have cover designs reflecting the content of the book.

"The artist who illustrated the inside of the book sometimes also designed the cover, but generally it was a different person, and Puffin had a regular roster of designers, many of whom were already established artists like William Grimmond. They were highly skilled and very adaptable, and book covers were a great showcase for them."

Sifting through thousands of cover designs at the Puffin archive in Rugby, Prof Baines says not every era of Puffin's book covers produced classics of the genre.

"One of the low points was the 1980s. Some of the covers we found were hysterically awful. But thank goodness that phase passed, and covers today are much more savvy and well-targeted at their market. Puffin also excels at respectful and sympathetic use of old artwork from its archive – such as that of the Tove Jansson Moomin series."

Some television tie-in books have less-than-successful covers, in Baines's opinion. "They often share the problem of heavy-handed typography and too much going on in general."

Does it matter if a children's book cover soon looks dated? "Not at all," says Baines. "It's very important that they are of their time, not timeless."

Puffin by Design – 70 Years of Imagination 1940-2010 by Phil Baines, Penguin paperback, 20. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage costs 2.75.