The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, Penguin edition
For his most recent addition to Penguin’s Great Orwell series, David Pearson used Caslon Doric, an early sans serif originally produced by the Caslon foundry in the 1880s. The typeface was revived by Paul Barnes of Commercial Type and is yet to be released.
1 Comment on “The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, Penguin edition”
This cover design presents one of those difficult spacing decisions: space the baselines evenly, or account for the ascenders and descenders and try for optical spacing (which in this case required a larger space between the second and third lines).
David Pearson went for the latter choice, which I think is the right one, but I wonder if he compensated too much. Perhaps line three can shift up a tad. Either way, there is no perfect solution and this is a nice cover overall. Wonderfully understated.
I’m excited about Caslon Doric.