David Pearson is a London designer who while working at Penguin spearheaded the beautiful set of pocket classics that marked their 70th year. A rainbow of 70 small paperback volumes each with wildly different covers. After hearing me gush about them my sister found a way to buy a set through a London friend and get them to Montana.
David Pearson gave an interview to design blog The Casual Optimist that is worth a look for the interested.
I was already an avid [Penguin book] collector and the idea for a design retrospective was one that I’d run past my Art Director before it was eventually tagged onto the company’s 70-year anniversary celebrations. I’d always wanted to get into the archives and have a really good poke around and fortunately for me, this gave me the perfect excuse. If I was unaware of the magnitude of the company’s past achievements they very quickly became apparent as I worked my way through the vast isles of books.
Watching chickens is a very old human pastime, and the forerunner of psychology, sociology and management theory. Sometimes understanding yourself can be made easier by projection on to others. Watching chickens helps us understand human motivations and interactions, which is doubtless why so many words and phrases in common parlance are redolent of the hen yard: “pecking order”, “cockiness”, “ruffling somebody’s feathers”, “taking somebody under your wing”, “fussing like a mother hen”, “strutting”, a “bantamweight fighter”, “clipping someone’s wings”, “beady eyes”, “chicks”, “to crow”, “to flock”, “get in a flap”, “nest eggs” and “preening”.