Romek Marber

Romek Marber (1925- ) was a Polish freelance designer noted for his work with Penguin Books.

Marber arrived in Britain in 1946; in 1961, impressed by Marber’s covers for "The Economist", Germano Facetti commissioned Marber to design covers for Simeon Potter's "Our Language and Language in the Modern World". He then asked Marber to propose a new cover approach for the Penguin Crime series. Marber decided to retain green as the series colour, though he chose a different shade, and he kept the horizontal banding of the previous Edward Young design. The image on Marber's covers occupies just over two-thirds of the space, while the title section at the top is divided into three bands carrying colophon / series name / price, the title and the author's name, with the type ranged left. This arrangement, now known as the Marber grid was adopted for much of the rest of the Penguin line giving that publisher its distinctive visual unity throughout the 1960s and 70s.

A sixteen page article in the magazine "Typographica" by Herbert Spencer in 1962 traced the history of Penguin cover design but neglected to mention Marber's input, prompting Facetti to ask Spencer for a correction of this oversight in the next issue. Duly a two-page correction lauding Marber appeared in "Typographica" 6.

References

* [http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=116&fid=504 "Eye" magazine article on Marber]