I’ve come across Penguin by Designers on a few sites now, and the cover intrigues me. I was discussing the grid used on Pelican Originals the other day, after seeing this post. I had thought that both sets of books used a fairly conventional grid, but assuming this cover is accurate, then the real one is more interesting.

I was looking at it, trying to work out how it’s built. I doubted that any part of it was entirelyarbitrary so I’ve redrawn it, but having each line only drawn in an obvious relation to something that already exists. What results is a pretty much perfect copy of the existing grid, so unless I was just lucky, I guess this is how they made their grid. These are the gridlines - each one is illustrated in blue as it is introduced:

1. Divide the page in two, vertically
2. Draw the ‘right’ diagonal, across the page
3. Draw the ‘left’ diagonal across the page
4. Draw a line from the top right corner so that it intersects the ‘left’ diagonal at a right angle
5. At that intersection, draw a horizontal line across the page
6. Draw a line from where the line from step 1 meets the top of the page to where the line from step 4 meets the left edge
7. From the intersection of that line with the ‘left’ diagonal from step 3, draw a horizontal across the page
8. From the intersection of the lines from steps 3, 4 and 5, draw a vertical to the top of the page
9. Now draw a diagonal from the top left of the page to where the line from step 5 meets the right hand side of the page
10. Now draw a vertical from the line from step 5 to the top of the page so that it passes throught the intersection of the lines from steps 3 and 7
11. Now for a final horizontal across the full page, passing through the intersections of the lines from steps 6 and 9
12. Then draw a final vertical from the intersection of this line with the left diagonal from step 3. Then add your titles and publisher logo!