Nobody knows who coined the maxim "you can't judge a book by its cover". But it would come as no surprise if the creator of that cliche turned out to be a moralist who simply laced pearls of wisdom and used a book cover as a metaphor.
In reality, some readers do pay attention to a book's cover. More than a few buy books simply because of the cover jackets. Bibliophiles know that the jacket, typeface, quality of binding and even the scent and texture of the paper are integral parts of the reading experience, like a birthday gift in beautiful wrapping paper and ribbons.
Such an emotional attachment _ or love affair _ for physical books is becoming obsolete. Sales of books have been in a steady decline, while the volume of e-book downloads is constantly rising. For the first time, sales of e-books for Amazon's Kindle surpassed those of hardbacks and paperbacks, Britain's The Guardian reported in August.
Yet, the physical book will survive. Publishing houses are using design to compete with digital books. Many publishing houses now release books in collector's series with attractive covers, craftsman-quality binding and innovative paper texture.
Indeed, renowned British publishing house Penguin has proved time and again that book covers are part of the whole literary experience, not just a survival ploy of book publishers.
Penguin Books, a billion-dollar business, is now promoting its strong design ethos through its "Art, Design, Culture: The History of Penguin by Design" exhibition. The exhibition, which tells the story of book and design evolution from the post-World War II era to the digital age, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to celebrate Penguin's 75th anniversary in 2010.
The exhibition has travelled to cities around the world, and this year will make several stops in Asia. The exhibition was held in Beijing last month, before moving to Hangzhou and then to Seoul, South Korea.
Penguin has forged joint ventures with many countries, most recently in Asia. In South Korea, it has printed classic literature under the local Penguin brand. In China, as well as printing Chinese classics, Penguin and a local publisher jointly released the best-selling biography of Chinese tennis player, Li Na.
COVERS CAN REALLY SAVE BOOKS
Zhuang Chen, a 21-year-old student, caressed the cover of The Last Tycoon, the final and unfinished book of F Scott Fitzgerald, best known for The Great Gatsby. With gold motifs slightly raised against the black background, the cover looks more like a decorative art piece. Other book covers in the F Scott Fitzgerald series have different patterns, but share a linear symmetrical pattern, the signature style of the Art Deco of the 1920s and 30s, the Jazz Age celebrated in Fitzgerald's works.
Zhuang admitted that she had never read any of Fitzgerald's books, nor any of the books displayed in the exhibition space.
"Looking at these book covers is inspiring enough," she said, pointing at a copy of Pride And Prejudice. Instead of using a traditional painting, Penguin had commissioned renown Cuban illustrator Ruben Toledo to give a surreal, funky look to works like Wuthering Heights and Pride And Prejudice.
"These books look much better in physical form than on a computer or tablet. We tend to like it more this way," said Zhuang, who studied graphic design at Beijing's renowned Central Academy of Fine Arts.
Now taking a typography design course, Zhuang said that there are more to books than the contents.
"In these books, we can see various typefaces, layout and a rich colour palette. Most of all, we can touch them and that makes a lot of difference," Zhuang said.
The boxed set of F Scott Fitzgerald titles recently published by Penguin is only one feast for the eyes for Zhuang and others attending the Penguin exhibition in Beijing.
On display are recent sets that Penguin has released. Others are Vladimir Nabokov's series, a cloth-bound Arabian Nights set and relaunched classics with jackets by Ruben Toledo.
Penguin has been a trailblazer in using attention-grabbing covers to help sell books. Seeing physical book sales were on the decline, the company made a U-turn by creating books as items for collectors.
The exhibition seems to reassure the place of Penguin as well as the future of physical books.
GOOD DESIGN DOES NOT COST MORE THAN BAD DESIGN
The exhibition showcases the strong design culture of Penguin _ the famed publisher that set out to provide classic books at affordable prices.
Surprisingly enough, Alan Lane, Penguin's founder, disliked illustrations on book jackets. Lane set up Penguin in 1935 after noticing the lack of good reading material available at kiosks at train stations in London.
Thriving on selling reissues of classic literature, Lane paid great attention to making books that looked good.
To create the logo of the Penguin brand, an in-house draughtsman was sent to sketch pictures of the flightless birds at London Zoo. The first cover design was a simple logo of three horizontal bands with a colour code based on genre.
Known as "the horizontal grid", the design format consisted of a coloured upper and lower band with a white band in the middle where the author and title were printed in the stark Gill Sans font. In the upper band was a cartouche with the Penguin logo.
Penguin used colour consistently and for pragmatic reasons, to define different genres _ orange for general fiction, green for crime fiction, cerise for travel, dark blue for biographies, red for drama and grey for world affairs.
The philosophy of Penguin's clean and minimalist design was strengthened by Jan Tschichold, a renowned German typographer. Advocating standardisation and unity, the art director wrote "Penguin Composition Rules" _ a four-page guideline on typographic style and instructions for editors and compositors.
Known as a modernist, Tschichold changed the tri-band style cover into the "Vertical Grid" that became standard for Penguin Fiction through the 1950s, and redesigned all 500 Penguin books after World War II.
But Lane always wanted to see Penguin's brand image renewed. In the 1960s Italian graphic designer Germano Facetti was hired to rejuvenate Penguin's conservative image.
Facetti brought in young graphic designers and, more importantly, he also used images and illustrations to help provide visual clues to a book's content, making titles more accessible to readers.
One of the most famous graphic designers under Facetti's lead was Romek Marber, a Polish immigrant, who designed a whole series of crime book covers. Sticking with the colour code and modern illustrations, Marber created iconic images for the modern-look Penguin.
The history of Penguin's book designs reflect changes in Western culture during that time. The 60s were an era of change for Penguin. New art director Alan Aldridge did not embrace traditional tri-band grid and colour code, favouring a poster style that corresponded with the psychedelic spirit of the decade.
The 1970s were also a time of continual change. Changing marketing and promotion tactics, new art director David Pellham abandoned the grid-system of book cover design for illustrations.
After that, it didn't matter what the cover designs looked like as publishing houses faced the same fate _ declining sales as people turned to other mediums _ movies, TV and for now e-books, the latest medium that many believe may spell the doom of physical books.
