Happy Listening

Written By Tim Lane

Penguin Random House decided to record Penguin Classics as audiobooks for the first time, launching with 50 famous and diverse faces/voices reading the first 50 books in a new audiobook series. My Penguin Creative team worked with Penguin Classics and Penguin Audio to launch the Happy Listening campaign which featured out-of-home and social advertising, including a beautiful animation.

With limited time and multiple locations in play, I decided we would photograph the narrators in black and white, with only headphones as a prop. This simple approach worked as they captured the spirit of the iconic minimal designs of the black Penguin Classics' book covers.

For the animation, we chose a handful of passages from the books and visualised what the narrator is saying, uniting them all with the iconic Penguin Classic white strip, featured all on the book covers.

Creative Direction: Tim Lane
Animation: Mica Murphy
Photography: Stuart Simpson, Chris Bethall, James Hole and Greg Funnell