Romek Marber

Romek Marber (25 November 1925 – 30 March 2020) was a Polish-born British graphic designer and academic known for his work illustrating the covers of Penguin Books. He retired in 1989, becoming a Professor Emeritus of Middlesex University.

Biography Marber was born in Turek, Poland on 25 November 1925. In 1939, he was deported to the Bochnia ghetto. In 1942, he was saved from being sent to the Belzec death camp by Sergeant Gerhard Kurzbach, the commander of the forced-labour workshop in Bochnia, credited with saving a large number of Jews during World War II and later recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Marber arrived in Britain in 1946, where he was reunited with his father and brother. However, he was advised by a member of the committee to apply for a course in Commercial art, which he enrolled upon at St. Martin’s School of Art in the early 1950s, and is where he met his wife, Sheila Perry (1928–1989), also a graphic designer; the couple married in 1958. About his time as a student, Marber said that he “spent time drawing and I regarded it as an exercise in observation, a visual note book.”

During the late 1950s, Marber designed covers for The Economist magazine. Marber chose to retain the green colour for the series, though he used a 'fresher' shade,

Penguin Books eventually decided that books in a series by the same author should have their own individual pictorial identification. Marber edited his original designs for Dorothy L. Sayers books by adding a small white figure, which he included in different postures on each cover.

Retrospective Exhibition: Graphics In 2013, The Minories, Colchester exhibited a retrospective of some of the graphic work designed by Marber for Penguin Books, The Economist, New Society, Town and Queen magazines, Nicholson’s London Guides, BBC Television, Columbia Pictures, the London Planetarium and others. It included enlarged versions of many of his book cover designs along with drawings and sketches documenting the Marber Grid, original spreads from magazines and original books. The exhibition was later shown at the University of Brighton and the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow.

Personal life Marber lived in Stisted, outside of Braintree, Essex and died there on March 30, 2020.