“The first Penguin titles appeared at a time when the various roles of designer, art director and printer were not clearly differentiated. The basic horizontal tripartite division of the covers, as well as the penguin itself, were devised by Edward Young, who became the company’s first Production Manager. The colours used to indicate subject matter—initially just orange for fiction, green for crime, dark blue for biography, cerise for travel & adventure, red for plays—were an aspect of the design which far outlasted the original layout.”

—Phil Baines, from Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, 2005.