Health and Australian Society

Published 1976
Design by Jack Newnham
Photo by Rennie Ellis
Buy Seven Hundred Penguins here

I've previously featured a small handful of covers from Seven Hundred Penguins (see them here), one of the greatest "sit on the back deck and have a beer or two as you thumb through a book" books I've ever owned. It's full of covers that would never see the light of day now, but few are better than this. No green salad and exercise regimen here; we see the problem, and not the solution. Could you get away with this in 2009?


While you're thinking that over, can you answer a quick question?

The Special Child

It's been a busy week and it's only going to get crazier, so I resort to the old standby: something from Seven Hundred Penguins. Every time I thumb through it something else jumps out at me; this time around, it's this 1973 design by Martin Causer.


My immediate reaction to this is that there's a snowball's chance in hell this would see the light of day today as it would be deemed politically incorrect. That it uses something that every educator would immediately recognize most likely wouldn't be enough to get it past the concept stage. But what do you think? Would you go here as a designer, or art direct someone here?

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Atomic Radiation

Design by Bruce Robertson

Finding it a little hard to get to the bookstore lately, so I turn once again to the incredible Seven Hundred Penguins. Predictably, it didn't take long to find an example of what has made Penguin such a great publisher over the years.


Published in 1964, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Atomic Radiation is a fantastic example of how two colors and geometry can jump out and kick your photo-illustrated cover's butt.

(And if anyone knows more about Penguin's "Intelligent Woman's Guide" series, please share with the rest of us. I found only one other reference to it: George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.)

3 from Seven Hundred Penguins

For book design geeks like us, it doesn't get any better than the recently published Seven Hundred Penguins.

I won't turn this into the Seven Hundred Penguins blog, but I will occasionally take some photos and post them here (yes, scans would be nicer, but this book is *not* getting smushed onto my scanner). I needed a good laugh today, and all of these brought a smile to my face.

Photograph by Tony Palladino (1968)


Photograph by Brian Worth
Design by Brian E. Rockett (1967)


Design by Erwin Fabian (1960)