Puffin information

‘Good design is absolutely crucial. A book will only succeed if it looks really good. Children are such sophisticated judges and they are the first to reject a book because of its cover. Format, typeface, blurb and, of course, the cover design play a crucial role in our success. We spend a lot of time talking about how a book should look - as much time as we do thinking about whether we should acquire it in the first place.’ (Francesca Dow, 2009)

‘The Author as brand’
‘The idea of packaging a single author’s works, or a particular set of related titles, in a similar manner to encourage collecting habit, is an old one and can be seen early on in the Puffin list. Today, however, this has been honed to a fine art and is the result of close collaboration between the editorial, marketing and design departments.

While not the first illustrator of Roald Dahl’s children’s stories, Quentin Blake has been illustrating them since 1976, and to many the two seem inextricably linked. For the latest re-branding of Dahl titles, Blake’s existing illustrations have been re-used and reconfigured as necessary to work with the more prominant use of Dahl’s name and the bellyband that contains the title. These are considerably better balanced visually than the previous design with its side bar and box, and make a very effective display en masse in bookshops.’

‘Among very successful visual author brands are the recent covers for Sarah Dessen, in which the image plays a more prominent role. Teenage and girly, bus sophisticated with it - so striking and successful are they that the publisher of some of Dessen’s other books has mimicked the design.’

‘Tove Jansson was also the illustrator of her own books, which gave her Moomin series of books a unity before author branding began to be fully exploited.’