This task involves researching Romek Marber, a freelance designer noted for his work illustrating the covers of Crime Penguin Books in 1960s. As well as researching the grid he is noted for creating, the Marber grid and using it in my own design for 3 book slips for 3 different penguin classics of my choice. The design can be as abstract as I like and photography can be used. The inside of the slip must feature a timeline of Marber's life.
1925 Romek Marber was born in Poland
1939 Marber was deported to the Bochnia ghetto
1942 Marber was saved from being sent to the Belzec death camp by Sergeant Kurzbach
1946 Marber arrived in Britain, where he was reunited with his father and brother
Early 1950s Marber enrolled at St. Martin's School of Art to study a course in Commercial Art
1953 Marber went on to attend the Royal College of Art
Late 1950s Marber worked on a number of projects such as covers for The Economist
1961 Marber was commissioned to design covers for Simeon Potter's Our Language and Language in the Modern World
June - October 1961 Marber was asked to submit a proposal for a new cover approach for the Penguin Crime series, he was asked to do twenty titles in this time and he ended up conceiving a grid layout for Penguin book covers that became one of the most praised and recognised layouts of all time
1965 He did the trailer for "The War Game", however the impact of Marber's imagery posed a potent threat and it was banned from public broadcast until 1985
2005 Marber gave a speech about design and his own experiences to an audience a the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
2007 Marber gave a talk to the Penguin Collectors Society
2010 Marber published an autobiography of his experiences during World War Two titled 'No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust'
2013 The Minories, Colchester exhibited a retrospective of graphic work designed by Romek Marber for Penguin books, The Economist, New Society, Town and Queen magazines, Nicholson's London guides, BBC Television, Columbia Pictures, London Planetarium and others. The exhibition went on to be shown at the University of Brighton and the Gailicia Jewish Museum in Krakow
2015 Marber returned to Poland for the first time since 1945 when he was just 20 years old
This is all of the information I managed to gather from numerous sources about Marber's life, apart from the facts about his career there isn't a lot about his personal life. Of his career I would suggest the creation of the grid system to be one of the most successful points, it was applied to all of the orange and blue covers for Penguin fiction, further ending up being used for the whole list of Penguins.
1939 Marber was deported to the Bochnia ghetto
1942 Marber was saved from being sent to the Belzec death camp by Sergeant Kurzbach
1946 Marber arrived in Britain, where he was reunited with his father and brother
Early 1950s Marber enrolled at St. Martin's School of Art to study a course in Commercial Art
1953 Marber went on to attend the Royal College of Art
Late 1950s Marber worked on a number of projects such as covers for The Economist
1961 Marber was commissioned to design covers for Simeon Potter's Our Language and Language in the Modern World
June - October 1961 Marber was asked to submit a proposal for a new cover approach for the Penguin Crime series, he was asked to do twenty titles in this time and he ended up conceiving a grid layout for Penguin book covers that became one of the most praised and recognised layouts of all time
1965 He did the trailer for "The War Game", however the impact of Marber's imagery posed a potent threat and it was banned from public broadcast until 1985
2005 Marber gave a speech about design and his own experiences to an audience a the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
2007 Marber gave a talk to the Penguin Collectors Society
2010 Marber published an autobiography of his experiences during World War Two titled 'No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust'
2013 The Minories, Colchester exhibited a retrospective of graphic work designed by Romek Marber for Penguin books, The Economist, New Society, Town and Queen magazines, Nicholson's London guides, BBC Television, Columbia Pictures, London Planetarium and others. The exhibition went on to be shown at the University of Brighton and the Gailicia Jewish Museum in Krakow
2015 Marber returned to Poland for the first time since 1945 when he was just 20 years old
This is all of the information I managed to gather from numerous sources about Marber's life, apart from the facts about his career there isn't a lot about his personal life. Of his career I would suggest the creation of the grid system to be one of the most successful points, it was applied to all of the orange and blue covers for Penguin fiction, further ending up being used for the whole list of Penguins.
The grid is quite a complicated one however I am going to have to learn how to create it in order to complete the task, the steps below describe how it is to be done properly:
- Divide the page in two, vertically
- Draw the ‘right’ diagonal, across the page
- Draw the ‘left’ diagonal across the page
- Draw a line from the top right corner so that it intersects the ‘left’ diagonal at a right angle
- At that intersection, draw a horizontal line across the page
- 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
- From the intersection of that line with the ‘left’ diagonal from step 3, draw a horizontal across the page
- From the intersection of the lines from steps 3, 4 and 5, draw a vertical to the top of the page
- 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
- 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
- Now for a final horizontal across the full page, passing through the intersections of the lines from steps 6 and 9
- Then draw a final vertical from the intersection of this line with the left diagonal from step 3.
I would like to create 3 different designs for the books so therefore I'm going to carefully select the books I use - each one under a different genre. Possible design options are:
- Photography
- Abstract shapes
- Line drawing
- Patterns
- Collage
- Mixed media
- Mark making with paint and pens
- Experimental typography
- Scannography
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