He must have been my favourite designer when I was growing up, but I didn’t know it till I read about him in Eye a few years ago.

First, he designed “Man Must Measure - the Wonderful World of Mathematics” in 1955, which was a book that had a big influence on me at an early age. It didn’t seem like maths at all, it was more like a colorful history of the world that was all pictures and diagrams, which I still remember, like the sun shinging down a well at the equator at midday, or how an abacus worked. I also recently discovered that Lancelot Hogben, who wrote it, was a Marxist, propagandist for progress — those guys must have gotten inside my head. And then I was really into poetry when I was a teenager, and had all “The Penguin Modern Poets” with Facetti’s covers. Funny, the covers were very mod, but the guts of the text was set in Monotype Bembo, a legacy from Tschicold’s day.

1964. Conceptual art.

Nicely worn and torn, Nick. Got any more covers to share?

This goes with the Thesaurus. Designed by Keith Whitehead in 1965, Facetti was the AD.
But I got it mainly for the rude words.

On Design Observer, William Drenttel notes that the Guardian has also published a proper obituary, written by Richard Hollis.

It turns out that Facetti was actually born in 1928, but I don’t know how to edit the title of this post (or if I can even do that!).

Thanks for fixing the post’s title, Typophile moderator(s).

This is from 1966. I don’t know if it is from the earlier era of designs led by Hans Schmoller, or even Tschichold. Does anybody know? They seem to have had a series of great designers.

I have the 1958 edition, with the same cover (only 2/6!), so it’s pre-Facetti.

It says that the first edition was 1950. I was thinking that the covers might have changed, but it looks like not. In any case it must have been Hans Schmoller who did the design—St. Bride had an exibit on him last spring at Typotechnica. But a similar kind of thing, not exactly the same, was done by Tschichold, as I see in the Rauri McLean bio on him.

Wonderful stuff, the whole run of years of those Penguins.

I guess what always attracted me particularly were the good looking covers that were purely typographic—no photos. These had a certain calm, literary quality that was lovely.

They weren’t afraid of white space, or of type.

Alan Powers, in his wonderful Front Cover, has a spread that features some Penguin poetry books from the same period, also using pattern papers on the covers... Apparently they are from the Hans Schmoller era (post-1949). Powers also mentions that a German designer, Elisabeth Friedlander, created the pattern for one of the poetry covers he shows in his book, and adds that she began working for Penguin in 1948.

This dates from 1962, design by Stephen Russ, AD Facetti.
Nice update of the genre.

BTW, note the shortening cheat on the descender of the “g” in the bottom line: it has the “Myriad” form. I wonder how they did that, on demand or a special font.

Lovely color and texture composition.

Germano wFacetti as actually born in 1926, as per all the online obits in Italian.
I don’t know why all the English ones have got it wrong.
He was a great man. I’d been writing him a long letter to send for his 80th next month...
None of the obits gives any real idea of his anarchic and mischievous intelligence, and the sheer fun of being in his company

Resquiet in pace, my dear friend

Hello folks, I’m new here (first post!) but I couldn’t resist commenting on the passing of Germano Facetti. Like Nick Shinn, it was his cover designs for Penguin, along with Penguin’s wonderful taste in typography, that awoke me to a love of books when I was a teenager. His cover designs for the Modern Classics series also introduced me to a lot of painters that, at that time, I hadn’t come across. Under his art direction Penguin seemed to be a repository for the best of European culture in the 20-th Century. I had — and still have — most of the Modern European Poets series and his Modern Classics series.

I think it was under him that Penguin achieved true greatness, emerging from the austerity of the war years to present books as a passport to enlightened values. After 1980, or thereabouts, British book publishing lost its way and has never quite recovered, imho. So much that is produced there looks shoddily conceived and executed. But Germano Facetti was a light that shone in my teenage years and I owe him a debt of thanks for that.

Cheers to you all — this is a wonderful forum for the lover of type and print.

Eluard

Hey everybody,
I’m new here too!
I just saw this topic about Germano Facetti and I’d like
to send you this link: http://www.aiap.it/notizie/0/9839

At the link you’ll find only informations in italian,
really sorry for that, here some infos

An exibition about him is gonna have place
at Museo Diffuso della Resistenza,
della Deportazione, della Guerra,
dei Diritti e della Libertà
corso Valdocco 4/a – Torino

opening:
Thursday January 24th 2008, 17.00
The exibition will last until April 27th 2008

I started reading Phil Baine’s Peguin by Design last week and so I found about Germano Facetti yesterday.

He made some inspiring work indeed.

I’m thinking about buying Penguin’s Great Ideas Box Set just for the covers (and then maybe I will read a couple of the books a year).

Héctor