The Science Fiction banner that David Pelham had introduced across the tops of sf covers in 1972-73 was retained for most of the decade, along with black backgrounds, centred typography and a purple Penguin logo in the top right corner. But while the artwork on earlier covers had identified the books as part of a series, this was less obvious for the books that followed as the style of artwork varied from one title to the next. The trend was started by Pelham himself in 1974 and continued by a number of freelance illustrators whose artwork began appearing on sf covers the following year.

David Pelham's artwork for the 1974 reprint of Tiger! Tiger! is one of his most celebrated designs and was one of the covers he discussed when invited to speak at '70 Years of Penguin Design' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 2005. In his talk, Pelham quoted from the blurb on the book's back cover and praised the "gifted copywriter" at Penguin who had written it, Meaburn Staniland. What Pelham did not mention (and may not have known) was that his former colleague was also an sf author. Staniland's novel about time travel, Back to the Future, was published in 1947 but has been out of print ever since, although its subject and title reappeared in 1985 as a Hollywood movie by the American director Robert Zemeckis. However, the film does not credit Staniland's novel and it is not known if Zemeckis knew of it.

Staniland's blurb for Tiger! Tiger! describes the novel's protagonist, Gully Foyle, as a "liar, lecher, ghoul, walking cancer. Obsessed by vengeance, he's also the twenty-fourth century's most valuable commodity – but he doesn't know it. His story is one of the great classics of science fiction". Pelham agreed, and wanted a portrait of Gully Foyle on the cover, but as he explained in his talk, "you can't depict such a portmanteau character in a conventional portrait because his likeness is no more than a cleverly arranged series of words". So Pelham created "a composite portrait made out of debris" in homage to the sixteenth-century Italian painter and "first surrealist" (who famously did it with fruit) Guiseppe Arcimboldo. Pelham then added Foyle as a tiny white spot, adrift in space near the portrait's eye, "because that's where we first come across him, barely getting by, living in the tangled remains of a drifting spaceship that has exploded". And having Arcimboldo'ed Bester once, Pelham did it again for The Demolished Man, though with a title like that he could hardly have done otherwise.

Planet of the Apes was a hugely popular film but few would have known that it was based on Monkey Planet, so when the book was reprinted in 1975 Penguin advertised the fact on a large red sash. This no doubt helped to shift more copies but it spoiled an otherwise great cover.

For John Boyd's novels the Science Fiction banner was dropped from the top of the cover and a small label was placed beneath the logo, thereby recalling the sf covers of Alan Aldridge in 1967 and Franco Grignani in 1969-70.