Penguin Book Sleeves - Romek Marber

Marber Timeline

-        Romek Marber was born in Poland in 1925

-        In 1945 World War II ended and the death camps were liberated  

-        Marber arrived in Britain in 1946 to be reunited with his father and brother

-        He applied for an educational grant for painting from ‘The Committee for the Education of Poles in Great Britain’ however the Committee only awarded grants for the study of applied arts

-        In 1949 Marber enrolled at St Martins School of Art to study Commercial Art

-        In 1953  he studied Graphic Design at the Royal College of Art

-        During the 1960s Marber designed covers for the Economist

-        During this time he also produced covers for the New Society

-        Germano Facetti became the new Penguins art director and in 1961 noticed Marber’s work for the Economist and asked him to design covers for Our Language and Language in the Modern World by Simeon Potter.

-        In 1961 Marber was asked to create a proposal for the Penguin Crime Series, this led to the development of Marbers grid.

-        Herbert Spencer wrote an article in Typographica Magazine, in 1962, which discussed the history and development of Penguin cover designs . In this article individual designs were credited to Marber however the overall grid system was attributed to Facetti. Facetti immediately wrote in and Spencer corrected his previous article in length.

-        Penguin changed their policy so that authors who had multiple titles would have pictorial identification

-        Marbers work for Penguin led to many offers of work, one of which was an article about the Mafia in the Queen magazine.

-        The success of Marber’s grid was later transferred to Penguins Blue Pelican covers and their Orange Fiction covers

-        In 1963 Alan Aldridge became the new art director of fiction and Penguin made a move away from Marber’s Grid

-        After becoming disengaged with designing crime covers he took a break for a few years

-        Between 1963 and 1964 Marber was the art director for the Observer Magazine

-        He was asked by Penguin to design six covers for Angus Wilsons Novels in the new house style which separated illustrators and designers.