I'm a digital media geek who likes to say things like "Print is dead." But Penguin's new "Great Ideas" series forces me to eat my words. These little paperback gems are printings of a small catalog of landmark works of philosophy  – I picked up Kirkegaard, Machiavelli, Marcus Aurelius, Rousseau, and Plato – and each one is designed with a loving meticulousness that is rarely lavished on the humble paperback. The cover designs, which mostly rely on elegant  typography (none of the usual crappy stock images of marble busts), are letterpressed – letterpressed! – into a wonderful ivory coverstock with a cold-press texture like watercolor paper.

Academic publishing has long been a godforsaken bastion of terrible graphic design – poor typography, stock images dating back four decades, all printed onto cheap, smudge-prone paper. Being both a philosophy major and a graphic designer, I've often been pained that the books dearest to my heart are so offensive to my eye. I'm glad to see that a publisher is finally giving these great thinkers the handsome faces they deserve.