Sneha Girap (Editor)

Germano Facetti

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Name
  
Germano Facetti

Children
  
Lucia Facetti

Movies
  
La Jetee

Spouse
  
Mary Crittall (m. ?–2006)

Role
  
Graphic designer


Germano Facetti Design Friday Germano Facetti and Penguin Classics


Died
  
April 8, 2006, Sarzana, Italy

Books
  
Identity Kits: A Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals

Germano Facetti (5 May 1926 – 8 April 2006) was an Italian graphic designer who headed design at Penguin Books from 1962 to 1971.

Contents

Germano Facetti Design Friday Germano Facetti and Penguin Classics

Born in Milan, he was arrested in 1943 for putting up anti-Fascist posters. He was deported to Mauthausen as a forced labourer, where he met the architect Ludovico Belgiojoso who later invited him to join his practice in Milan.

Germano Facetti penccil Germano Facetti Master of Covers

He moved to London 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, at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Germano Facetti penccil Germano Facetti Master of Covers

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 that inspired the director of Penguin, Allen Lane, to invite him to join as the art director in 1960. Facetti was instrumental in redesigning the Penguin line, introducing phototypesetting, the 'Marber grid', offset-litho printing and photography to their paperback covers.

Germano Facetti Germano Facetti for Penguin Books Drinkin39 And Dronin39

Facetti was also responsible for the black cover designs of the Penguin Classics 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.

After leaving Penguin in 1972 Facetti worked for the publishing company Fabbri in Milan, in his native Italy. He was called to work on the team by his friend and editorial director Giorgio Giulio Savorelli, with whom he had collaborated in the past. He collaborated with Chris Marker on the 1962 groundbreaking experimental new wave film, La jetée.

Publications

While at Penguin, Facetti wrote an account of his aims, published in 1967 and reprinted in 2007.

Death

Facetti died on 8 April 2006, aged 79.

Year of birth

Sources citing 1926 as Facetti's year of birth, not 1928:

  • http://www.designmuseum.org/design/penguin-books
  • http://www.typophile.com/node/19230
  • http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20060416/ai_n16166320* http://www.designmuseum.org/design/penguin-books
  • http://metarchivi.istoreto.it/biografie/p_bio_vis.asp?id=9
  • References

    Germano Facetti Wikipedia