The intention was to make readers buy Penguin paperbacks “as they would a bottle of Chanel No. 5, because they wanted more of exactly the same stuff and didn’t have any reason to try alternatives,” writes Peter Campbell in an essay in The London Review of Books. In celebration of Penguin’s 70th birthday, Campbell, an “art guru and a typographer,” considers an exhibit of Penguin covers, Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005, organized by Phil Baineson, and now on display at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Speaking of early attempts at Penguin branding, Campbell writes, “So long as Penguin had rights in most of what one class of book buyers was likely to want to read in paperback (and buyers of Penguins mostly belonged to one class), identity was an advantage.” The exhibit shows remarkable and peculiar covers from Penguins long history and shows how, by the late 1950’s, Penguin had started scaling back its branding efforts.