Pursuits
The Story Behind Penguin Books' Beloved Bird
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Last year’s merger of Penguin and Random House sparked speculation about what the new mega-publisher’s logo would look like. A penguin-shaped house? An igloo? Would the beloved bird be jettisoned altogether? The answer arrived yesterday: Both symbols will remain in Penguin Random House’s arsenal of imprints alongside a new, unassuming wordmark spelling out the company’s name.
That’s good news for fans of the penguin, whose image has graced affordable paperbacks for nearly 80 years. If you’ve ever wondered how it got there in the first place, here’s the skinny, courtesy of TM: The Untold Stories Behind 29 Classic Logos (Laurence King), a forthcoming book by Mark Sinclair: