Another thing that may have played a role is that traditionally Penguins were published in orange covers with black and white being the only available colors besides orange. A penguin becomes an obvious mascot under these limitations (I suppose a Holstein cow could have worked too).
> Inspired by the existing Albatross Books, Lane’s nascent company wanted an animal for their mascot. Many years after the fact, designer Edward Young explained (as quoted by Hornsey) that after a couple hours of fruitless brainstorming, “we were in despair. Then suddenly the secretary’s voice piped up from behind the partition (her name, it should be recorded for posterity, was Joan Coles). She said, ‘What about Penguins?’”
(Unless you mean why Ms. Coles thought of it, but that probably is beyond reasonable hope of answer.)
I think there are additional factors mentioned in the article. Apart from the black/white aspect of printing (though the covers had colour):
> Off went Young to the London Zoo, where the “fiercely modernist” Penguin Pond exhibit had opened the year before to general acclaim.
As the article pointed out, Penguin started with a bit of left bias, and modernism (and futurism) were associated with and inspirational to the left as they embodied change, as opposed to the conservative stance of the right. While that has nothing to do with the animals themselves (who tend, like all animals, to be pretty conservative) one can imagine how, when visiting such an exhibition, the architechture could establish a philosophical penumbra for Young, especially given the times we're talking about.
They are publishers of printed books. How many black-and-white animals are there? How many of those have complicated stripe patterns too difficult to print in a tiny logo? Did they really have a choice?
Penguin are the paperback publisher of my favorite author, Graham Greene, and most of my copies of his books are the orange-spined Penguin Paperback editions. That color branding (which was phased out in the early 90s) was a brilliant way to make their books stand out on bookstore shelves. I discovered other authors in the 80s by means of picking up random orange-spined books from the fiction shelves at bookstores back in the 80s. Should my novel ever find a publisher and be printed in a paperback edition for which I have any influence in cover design, I’m going to request that the spine be Penguin paperback–orange.
The covers of the first Penguin Paperbacks, with their austere Gill Sans typography are, of course also iconic, to the extent that they are often mimicked in products like notebooks and other book-like products offered for sale.
The live specimens at the London Zoo’s Penguin Pond “provoked a range of anthropomorphic media analogies, including soldiers on parade, ‘Dominicans in feathers,’ and ‘self-conscious chorus girls.’”
Okay, but if you ask what particular kind of person a penguin resembles, isn't "guy in a tuxedo" way ahead of all other answers combined?
at the risk of sounding dumb, does that article even actually answer why Tux? I know it asks it at the top but I didn't see an answer. I read it 3x and couldn't figure it out.
