Germano Facetti (5 May 1928 – 8 April 2006) was an Italian

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

who headed design at

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

from 1962 to 1971.

Biography

Born in

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

, Facetti was arrested in 1943, age 17, for putting up anti-

Fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...

posters. He was deported to

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a German Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern ...

as a forced labourer, where he met the architect Ludovico Belgiojoso. At the end of the

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Belgiojoso invited Facetti to practice in his studio in Milan. He moved to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

in the early 1950s where he took evening classes in typography at the Central School of Art & Design, and participated in the seminal 1956 exhibition of pop art, ''

This is Tomorrow ''This Is Tomorrow'' was an art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery on Whitechapel High Street in London's East End, UK, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group. His ...

'', at the

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

. By the late 1950s he was art director at Aldus Books and working as an interior designer, working briefly in Paris. It was his interior for the Poetry Bookshop in

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

that inspired the director of Penguin,

Allen Lane Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...

, to invite him to join as the art director in 1960. Facetti was instrumental in redesigning the Penguin line, introducing

phototypesetting Phototypesetting is a method of Typesetting, setting type which uses photography to make columns of Sort (typesetting), type on a scroll of photographic paper. It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publ ...

, the ' Marber grid', offset-litho printing and photography to their paperback covers. Known for his standard of consistency amongst Penguin's covers, Facetti implemented variations of typographic framework that would be used for each cover. Only using the typefaces Standard and Helvetica, he used these sans serif fonts in the same sizes and positions for the author, book title, and series name amongst all of his covers. This was a result of his influence from Swiss typography. Facetti was also responsible for the black cover designs of the

Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint (trade name), imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English language, English, Spanish language, Spanish, Portuguese language, Portuguese, and Korean language, Korean amon ...

series from 1963. He recruited a number of leading designers of the day, and one of his important achievements for Penguin was to impose a consistently high standard of cover design. In November 1971, Facetti traveled to Chile to collaborate in the formation of the School of Graphic Design at the

Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso The Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso () (PUCV), also known as ''Universidad Católica de Valparaíso'' (UCV), is one of six Catholic universities in Chile and one of the two pontifical universities in the country, along with th ...

. After leaving Penguin in 1972 Facetti worked for the publishing company

Fabbri Fabbri may refer to: * Fabbri (surname), an Italian surname * Fabbri Group, an Italian amusement rides manufacturer, based in Bergantino * Fratelli Fabbri Editori, an Italian publishing house now part of Rcs MediaGroup * Fabbri and Partners Ltd ...

in Milan. He was invited to join the team by his friend and editorial director Giorgio Giulio Savorelli, with whom he had worked in the past. He collaborated with

Chris Marker Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) (born ''Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve'') was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and Essay#Film, film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée' ...

on the 1962 groundbreaking experimental new wave film, ''

La jetée ''La Jetée'' () is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the stable time loop story of a post-nuclear war ...

''.

Publications

While at Penguin, Facetti wrote an account of his design philosophy, ''Identity kits: A Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals''. It was published in 1967 and reprinted in 1971 and 2007.

Death

Facetti died on 8 April 2006, aged 79.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Facetti, Germano Italian graphic designers Artists from Milan 1926 births 2006 deaths Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design Penguin Books people Italian expatriates in the United Kingdom