Penguin celebrates dog-eared delights in new Happy Reading campaign

Penguin’s latest nationwide advertising campaign sees the esteemed publisher celebrating the unique and at times life-affirming relationship that forms between a reader and the books they’ve loved over the years.

Orchestrated by brand director Sam Voulters and designer Tom Etherington, Happy Reading consists of a series of posters that feature the well-read, and well-loved Penguin Classics cherished by artists, authors, musicians, and the general population.

“The books are the ‘talent’ in this campaign,” Sam tells It’s Nice That. “Every reader has had the experience of falling in love with one and we wanted to showcase books that demonstrated evidence of these relationships and that told stories beyond those printed on their pages, whether through their cracked spines, dog-eared pages or the furiously scribbled notes in their margins.”

Driven by what he describes as, “readers’ desire for books that are tangible and ‘real’," rather than the digital alternatives, Sam notes that the market for physical books has grown over the past decade. “This is perhaps demonstrated by the success of beautiful, clothbound editions that are enthusiastically collected worldwide,” he says.

Tom Etherington’s work for the campaign might not necessarily be as quaintly beautiful as the books Sam describes but it does demonstrate the wonderfully individual way most of us treat the books we hold dear to us: wear and tear is part and parcel of taking possession of a title that truly lives with you.

Just don’t scrawl in the margins of a book you’ve been lent by a friend. Please don’t do that.