Leeds Beckett Student Claims First Prize in Prestigious Penguin Books Cover Design Award

Ella Dorrington’s work triumphed in a national competition

Ella Dorrington, a second-year student on the BA (Hons) Graphic Design Course at Leeds Beckett University’s Leeds School of Arts was one of many designers who answered a very specific brief for Penguin’s annual competition.

Often the competition involves redesigning a single book cover but this year, with the publisher celebrating its 90th birthday, it tasked creatives with creating a new, flexible design system for paperbacks. Not only that, but they also had to tap into Penguin’s core design spirit of ‘bold, distinctive and mass market’.

The judges were Richard Bravery – Art Director at Penguin General – and Jim Stoddart – Art Director at Penguin Press, and they wanted to see entries that remained cohesive while straddling genres, as well as ideas that fitted with today’s ways of consuming books.

Richard said about Ella’s winning entry: “I really appreciated the way that [the design] looked at how we consume content rather than this very structured way that we maybe see books. This instantly appealed to me in that it felt like it was speaking to the way we consume content in a modern way.”

Ella said of her work, which was showcased in Creative Review: “The coloured stripes reference Penguin’s 1985 colour-coding system, updated to a contemporary palette that works for both print and digital marketing. Challenging traditional cover conventions, I chose to incorporate the genre onto the cover, ensuring readers can instantly identify the book’s subject, no matter where they see it.”

Ella’s prize includes a Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet, £100 of Penguin Random House Design Books and a six-month mentorship with a Penguin Art Director.

Reflecting on her win and what it means to her, Ella said: “Penguin publishing has this amazing history, with a plethora of incredible designers who have curated covers. Everyone knows Penguin books and I put a lot of work into the design, so it’s rewarding to have my work recognised. I hope to gain valuable industry insight in an internationally recognised publishing house which otherwise might not have been available to me. I came from a fine art background and knew very little about design in my first year. My course at Leeds Beckett taught me to pay attention to details I would otherwise have neglected and to see designing as a system.”