Long time no see! I have been busy the past few months but finally had time to get started on my urchins specials project.
What is this you might ask? :D
I've always wanted to try to bind a fanfic to look like a Penguin Classic. when I got some brilliant orange bookcloth in a mystery box order from Ratchfords I was even more intent on making this happen so I researched Penguin Classics designs through time and eventually came up with my own design which is not a direct copy of an existing design but nonetheless looks like it could've come out of a Penguin catalogue.
I combined design features of the vertical designs (vertical coloured stripes, prominent title, black vertical line, the publisher and imprint names in colour) and the horizontal designs (Gill Sans with letterspacing in three weights, bold, regular, and light with a rule below the title in colour). Further, just as the Pelican imprint has its own logo, I created a new logo for the series. the Penguin Specials series was a specialised non-fiction line separate, but part of, the great Penguin Classics imprint.
All of these inspirations culminated in my urchin classics (lowercase intentional).
“I left the medic room with ash on my hands and grease on my mouth and my heart clamped round with iron wire, the sort they used to keep urchins out of the shops in Molly.”
—Havemercy, Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
the first three urchins are A6 sized bound in turquoise or yellow bookcloth (the orange will be reserved for A5 sized urchins), self-ended, and printed on 80gsm Xerox Cream. the cover paper and the dustjacket is 160gsm Canaletto Cream.
urchin no. 1 - The Constellations of Touch by what_alchemy (Daredevil, Matt/Foggy)
urchin no. 2 - In the City of Blinding Lights by Mizzy (Daredevil, Matt/Foggy)
urchin no. 3 - Something Dumb to Do by poisonivory (Daredevil, Matt/Foggy)
I need to do some finetuning on the jackets as the first three didn't come out right (the margins on the flap text aren't correct on any of them) but so far I'm really happy with how these came out. :D
P.S. here is a video on tiktok for those who want to see these in action.