The inspired British fabric and wallpaper designer Osborne & Little has brilliantly married two of my obsessions, books and interior design, in their recently released Penguin Library wallpaper. With this collage of front covers from the famous Penguin publishing house, you can now have these iconic tri-banded paperbacks covering your walls without all that annoying reading!
Penguin Library Wallpaper from Osborne & Little
Launched in 1935, the Penguin paperbacks not only broke the book-design mold, but their low prices made quality literature more accessible than it had ever been. According to the Osborne and Little press release:
The Penguin tri-band design was the work of Edward Young, a 21-year-old office junior who went on to become the company’s first Production Manager, who was also dispatched to London zoo to sketch a penguin for the now well-recognised and much-loved logo. The template he created consisted of three horizontal stripes: upper and lower bands colour coded by genre … and a central white panel containing the author and, of course, they came printed with the iconic Penguin logo. The distinctive simplicity was a radical departure from the more ornate approach of its competitors and spoke volumes about the new company.