Books do indeed furnish a Room. What if books could be the cultural source for objects and designs which we also find useful in our daily lives? Everything was guided by William Morris in this. He said…

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”

This wasn’t a slavish adherence to craft methods. The two things combine: useful and beautiful. Mass production is fine if done ethically and without waste. It was important to ensure that all production methods (even for the simplest objects like a mug) were the right ones.

This was the main thrust of the Project. For 10 years (2002-2012) the designs (produced or conceptualised) explored the best ways to combine brand, style and practical utility. The main designs created were:

• Penguin Espresso – Porcelain pair with matching saucers
• Penguin Mugs – 31 designs.
• Penguin Tea-towels – 4 designs
• Penguin Pencils – 2 designs – Classic Orange and the Classics Black
• Penguin Deckchairs – 13 designs
• Penguin Canvases – 11 Designs
• Penguin Bookchase® – Boardgame

Design Innovation
One of the challenges here was to balance the variety of titles with wit, colour, and the nature of the object. This was solved with the Bookbags by making them double-sided allowing for a ‘change of mood’. Flip the bag and the statement of the title is different. See The Lost Girl/Mantrap Bookbag for illustration of this. Mugs could be ‘paired’ in retail to create messages: see Thinking to Some Purpose & Together. Packaging was also important. Initially none of the products were packaged for eco reasons. The Tea-towel tubes (card) were the perfect gift pack. The mugs also had boxes designed with clever details for recycling.

Cover Archive
Initially select covers were taken from ‘classic’ designs in the Cover archive for use in Print-on-demand. These were printed and framed in partnership with Charles Howell at Fine Digital Print, Wiltshire. He did a great job of faithfully reproducing the original paperbacks – print quality and all. So much so that someone once demanded an explanation for the letterpress impressions (which they thought were print errors) reproduced in the print. These were produced to order and the most popular covers were: The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler), and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

2012
Publishers are increasingly challenged to complement their income from books not just from digital sources (e-books etc) but also what’s termed ‘non-book’ product. Therefore in 2012 due to the impact and success of the project and its potential for revenue and the potential for scalability Penguin brought the project in-house to globally distribute the designs and sell directly.

Website: N/A
Distribution: UK/Europe/ROW
Availability: None of the designs are in production by Art Meets Matter now. Originally sold in various retailers all over the world including: Conran Shop London, Conran Shop Paris, British Library, Bertrams, Blackwells, Uppsala Bookshop (Sweden), Arvon Foundation, Camden Lock Books, Borders (UK), The Literary Gift Company, Heffers (Cambridge), Waterstones, Bijlevelt Boekhandel (NL), Papercut (Sweden).

Contact us if you have any comments about the work.

Prototypes and Ideas presented which did not progress for financial, technical or brand reasons by Penguin or had very limited production runs include: Tins, Lampshades, Bedding, iPad Covers, Beach Chairs, Kindle Covers, Tables (also for the Puffin Project LINK, and working with the ever brilliant and stylish FurnitureDesigner/Maker Steuart Padwick), Stationery Binders, Teacups, Teapots, Bookshelf, Glasses, USB storage, Messenger bags. Wanda Sowry even made a brilliant one-off automata to celebrate Penguin’s 70th Birthday. 

Press and PR
The response to the designs was phenomenal for a decade. Everyone sold them. We think almost everyone has them.

They have featured in almost every magazine of quality globally. They’ve appeared as props in West End plays. Lifestyle makeovers. Documentaries about design of the Deckchair. Incidental elements in Films (Simon Peg in How to lose Friends and Alienate People adaption of Toby Young’s book, which has Actor Bill Paterson Simon’s Dad in the film washing the mugs in New York) and TV. Elbow created a pastiche for their Seldom Seen Kid Album. Grayson Perry has parodied them (woven Penguin Mugs as in his Vanity of the Small Differences Tapestries at Victoria Miro.

Lily Allen has even been chased down the street by the paparazzi carrying her Penguin Mug. When the BBC did a feature on Penguin Books at 75 seven images summarised the company Pearson’s Marjorie Scardino was shown with one of our Deckchairs (also used for the Financial Times annual report). Below is just a very small selection of the press garnered by the project.

Anthony Gormley’s Trafalgar Square Plinth One and Other project saw William from Melrose installed just after midnight with his Big Sleep deckchair and a Penguin Mug.

There was even polemic about books being turned into commodities in The Guardian which Tony Davis replied to in article form.