FACEtti FACTS

Persecution 1961 by Peter Benenson..cover by Germano Facetti.
This little beaut arrived last week and is in superb condition for a first edition - its is one of my all time favourite book covers.


Germano Facetti (May 5, 1928-April 8, 2006) was an Italian graphic designer and head of design at Penguin Books from 1962 to 1971. He moved to London in the early 1950s where he studied typography at the Central School of Art & Design. By the late 1950s he was art director at Aldus Books and a working interior designer, his interior for the Poetry Bookshop in Soho inspired the director of Penguin, Allen Lane, to invite him to his firm as art director in 1961. Facetti was instrumental in redesigning the Penguin line, introducing phototypesetting, the Marber grid, offset-litho printing and photography to their papberback covers.


The Observer in 1961 read "In October a Penguin Special called "Persecution 1961" will be published as part of our Amnesty campaign. In it are stories of nine men and women from different parts of the world, of varying political and religious outlook, who have been suffering imprisonment for expressing their opinions. None of them is a professional politician; all of them are professional people. The opinions which have brought them to prison are the common coinage of argument in free society."