Publishing

I am going to look into the Publishing Industry, which in the UK is worth a very surprising £4.5 billion. The UK book industries turnover from exports far exceeds that of TV, Music and even Film. This seems quite strange to me due to the fact that most books are now available to read online, on tablets or mobile phones as e-books. One area is the General/Consumer Groups which produces a mass market of paper books and covers around 60% of Industry sales in the UK. This area of the industry produce the best selling Fiction and Non-Fiction books.

One example of a company within this area of the Industry is 'Penguin'. Penguin is known as being one of the biggest  and most successful book publishers in the UK, and potentially even in the World. Penguin recently became part of a bigger network of publishers through joining together with 'Random House' in 2013 to create 'Penguin Random House', and it has much more publishers worldwide through this. Penguin work with many different agencies and authors to create their Fiction and Non-Fiction Books ready for publishing.

Penguin Logo [1]

Random House Logo [2]

Penguin Random House Logo [3]

You should be familiar with the phrase, 'Don't judge a book by it's cover'. However as a designer you need to read the book and create the front cover based on what you have read. Therefore you should judge a book by it's cover. The front cover is very important on a book as its the first thing the consumer will see. They will instantly decide if they like or dislike the book purely on the look of the front cover. They have to have the right typography, colours and imagery to attract the right target audience. For example if you have a fictional book about flying elephants, you would realise that the target audience is likely to be for younger children, therefore you would use fun bright colours that would engage the younger children. A boring cover that is just black and white would not attract any attention from the target audience.

Do Judge A Book By It's Cover Design [4]

The Small Press. These are just what you think, small publishing companies. They are just like the big companies, but they are independent and have more daring ways of production and they have slightly more creative freedom. Their client lists won't be huge, but the small press is an ever growing part of the industry due to a high rise in demand for their publishing. The small press part of the industry sometimes use traditional printing techniques such as screen printing, which will obviously take quite a long time in comparison to the modern printing techniques such as risograph as it prints much faster and is completely digital.Due to the higher rise in demand for the small press companies to publish books, the larger companies often steal ideas that are successful for the small press. One example I can put down for a small press is 'Nobrow', which I looked at in my previous post.

Another area is 'Children's Books'. The Children's Book market is a growing market both digitally and printed. Children are becoming more familiar with technology, so interactive children's e-books are being created, however there is as much of a demand for printed books where the children can colour things in and interact. Children's books obviously change with age, so the younger a child, the more simple the book will be. For example a book for a child that is 0-4 years old could be something like, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Touch and Feel Playbook'. An example of a book for a child that is 5-10 years old could be something like, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Roald Dahl'.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: Touch and Feel Playbook [5]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Roald Dahl [6]

There is different areas of children's books. These go from Picture Books, to Younger Fiction, to General Fiction, to Teenage Fiction, to Non-Fiction. It is recognised as well that older children's books are still just as popular, or they are even more popular than modern day children's books. This is probably due to parents wanting to read books to their children, which they had read to them when they were children. The two examples of books I have shown above both are fairly old, but are still very popular today. I myself remember these books from when I was younger.

Another area of the market is 'Journals'. A journal is 'A newspaper or magazine that deals with a particular subject or professional activity'. Journals can come in the forms of educational, academic, reference, scientific, technical, professional, medical, etc. You can experiment quite a bit with the front cover imagery, however the typefaces are usually quite boring. One example I have found is from a science journal where you can see the engaging imagery, yet boring typeface. However I do think that the typeface is suited to the journal.

Science Journal [7]

There is also the editorial side of the market. This makes up for things like newspapers, periodical, magazines and zines. Editorial can be boring if you have to layout black and white text over a page in a newspaper, however if you are working on a zine, you will have much more freedom to work with the text and with colours. Newspapers are much more formal than that of magazines and zines. Below is an example of editorial design which I really like, although there is only the use of black, white and yellow. The text and imagery make it look different, fun and engaging. Also the negative space helps to make the text seem like very little due to the openness of the double page spread.

David Lynch Editorial Design [8]

There are many different areas in Publishing that include Editorial, Design, Production, Marketing, Distribution, Legal and Administration. For the publishing side of the market to work, all of these different areas have to work together, like the fitting of a jigsaw puzzle.

We were given the task of finding and researching the publisher of a book/magazine that we liked. My choice was to go for a magazine called 'Men's Health'.

Men's Health Magazine Cover [9]

Men's Health is a magazine typically about Men's Health. It includes information on exercising, what foods to eat, what liquids to drink, your sex life, your mental state and many more. It is very informative but in a fun way. It's a lads magazine so it obviously has images of half naked women in. They also have punchy sub-titles on the cover to engage the reader, along with an image of a famous male character.

Men's Health magazine is originally an American magazine but made its way across the pond in 1995 when the first UK edition was published. The the company that published originally called the 'National Magazine Company', but later became known as 'Hearst Magazines', which is it's  name today. Men's Health is the UK's best selling men's magazine, which is understandable in today's society where most men want to be fit, healthy and muscular. Hearst Magazines has many other popular magazines under it's belt, including 'Cosmopolitan', 'Best', 'Esquire', 'Elle', 'Reveal', 'Women's Health' and many more.

Image References:
[1]http://www.penguin.co.uk/about-penguin/
[2]http://www.randomhouse.com/
[3]http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/penguin_random_house_2014_logo_detail_white.png&imgrefurl=http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_penguin_random_house_by_pentagram.php&h=165&w=306&tbnid=L5o22QdM28_EwM:&zoom=1&tbnh=81&tbnw=151&usg=__GrYP4PhID4elPOI30TqkdecuZNs=&docid=J5NQIC0AQBMboM&itg=1&ved=0CH8Qyjc&ei=WyikVJDUOoT2UoSOgdgF
[4]https://sawriters.org.au/2014/07/09/cant-judge-book-cover-can/
[5]http://www.educationumbrella.com/r2r/baby-bookshop/0/13/?gclid=Cj0KEQiA_ZOlBRD64c7-gOzvrP0BEiQAAYBnd00I-jcRWo9-vINH--g-eVrLGVIYNcl9A6HIQDsK06oaAojy8P8HAQ
[6]http://bookshop.theguardian.com/charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory-14.html
[7]http://riomasvos.com/
[8]http://abduzeedo.com/editorial-design-inspiration-david-lynch
[9]http://shavedoctor.co.uk/mens-health/