Book covers by Germano Facetti, best known as Cover Art Director for Penguin Books from 1960 to 1972.
Facetti was born in Milan in 1928 and spent part of the Second World War in the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen.
In London, Facetti attended Edward Wright´s evening classes in typography at the Central School of Arts and Craft. He worked with Theo Crosby and Ed Wright in 1956 on the entrance area of the seminal exhibition "This is Tomorrow" at the Whitechapel Art Gallery; he also designed the Poetry Bookshop in Soho. A brief spell in Paris followed, where he worked as an interior designer for the marketing arm of the advertising agency Snip, and helped set up the Snark Picture Library.
On his return to Britain he was brought into Penguin Books by Tony Godwin, who realised that to meet the challenge of younger, more aggressive publishers Penguin would have to change the way it presented its books.