Germano Facetti | 1928 - 2006

Richard Hollis has told a distilled version of Germano Facetti's story.

He designed some great book covers whilst art director at Penguin in the 1960s.

Rick Poynor told how he implemented the famous grid system in the newspaper yesterday (full colour reproductions too, thank you central line c22:00)

From Dot Dot Dot 6:

In the Spring 1967 issue of the Vignelli-designed trade journal Dot Zero, Facetti surveyed the Penguin design programme in an essay titled ‘Paperbacks as a Mass Medium’. Referencing thumbnails of his own work, Facetti demonstrated the ways in which ‘a disciplined framework of design with a maximum of flexibility’ could prove indispensable for making cover design choices that reinforced the publisher’s corporate identity while maintaining a high standard of quality across a variety of titles. ‘Such efforts on the part of publishers’, Facetti explained, ‘demonstrate that for them at least graphics is reaching a point of professionalism, and is overcoming the arty-crafty approach of the single beautiful achievement’. In an industry where the standard practice was to design book covers title-by-title, the commercial success of the redesign of Penguin Books bore out Facetti’s claims, and US publishers soon followed suit, hiring designers like Troller to create covers for their own trade paperback imprints.

He also starred in one of my favourite films, la Jetee.