Initial Research — Penguin Books
Within the Baxter & Bailey brief I was immediately drawn towards the theme of Penguin and Puffin Books. The reason being that illustration is a subject that I am fascinated with and I have been waiting for the opportunity to be able to integrate it within my graphic design work. Initially, I created mind maps to get an understanding of books that have been published by Penguin Books.
My research educated me on the history of Penguin Books. I found that it is part of Penguin Random House, a company made up of multiple business entities; these being Penguin (owned by Pearson plc.) and Random House (owned by Bertelsmann). The merge between the businesses occurred in 2013.
Penguin Books itself was founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane. In 1934, he went to a book stall at Exeter St David’s. He found that all of the books were poor quality and too expensive. The following year he started Penguin Books and it revolutionised book publishing. His aim was to make quality books accessible to all by making them affordable. This then developed into something more than just book publishing, the business began the WriteNow programme which mentors, supports and publishes authors who are under-represented. They offer paid work experience and their jobs do not require a degree, they want an inclusive environment with books and a company that is as diverse as the society it represents. These values I feel link back to Baxter & Bailey’s values — both aim to create an impact and have leave long lasting positivity within their audience and anyone they are associated with.
Puffin Books is an imprint of Penguin Books, they publish specifically children’s books. It was founded in 1940 when the target audience was children who had been evacuated during the war. The books were designed and written to help the children adjust to living in the country, helping them become familiar with their surroundings. Again, this resonates with Baxter & Bailey’s values — education will always have a positive impact.
Penguin Random House are a community of publishing brands and imprints with a mission to make books for everyone because a book can change anyone. With an understanding that reading connects and transforms people, they understand their creative responsibility of reading, community, inclusion and sustainability. This lead to my next piece of research into understanding what Penguin Random House do for the community.
The Puffin World of Stories began in 2018 having been launched by the National Literacy Trust. The aim was to transform/create libraries in schools across the United Kingdom, having found that 53% of teachers say that their schools have no libraries. Having impacted 130 schools already, their aim is to expand to 80 more schools from September 2020.
The work includes making reading part of the school day, this encourages every child to pick up a book and use their imagination. Penguin Random House understand that in a world full of technology children can often be steered away from books and pushed towards computers, tablets and mobile phones. Some children will never have experienced the satisfaction of holding a book, feeling the pages and feeling a sense of achievement once it is finished. By giving schools 300 new books and colourful resources and materials to bring library spaces to life, children will feel compelled to go in there and choose a book.
Staying consistent with the commemorative theme, the next step in this project was choosing a book which I wanted to depict within my stamp set. Having looked on the Penguin Books website I wanted to select a book with a large audience so that the stamps could really be appreciated. I looked at the Penguin and Puffin Classics, I decided to choose a book which I knew well and one which I thought I could successfully recreate in the short period of time we had for this module.
Initially, I thought of choosing The Very Hungry Caterpillar as I thought about the opportunity for print-making within this — creating simple shapes with handmade stamps and really portraying the child-like elements of the book.
As the books were all classics, I knew that the Royal Mail would have already commemorated some of the stories. Peter Pan, The Snowman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were already existing stamps. I then attempted to avoid looking at these books to try and gather ideas for my project, however one of the books kept coming back to me and I kept thinking of more and more ideas for it.
I thought that the story of the Jungle Book could be suitable for both the Royal Mail and Baxter & Bailey, seeing as the story demonstrates equality and accepting others; both of which are values that should be advertised to the public. The Wizard of Oz also contains lessons which I feel should be promoted — teaching children to be who they are and not who others expect them to be. Following a lot of decision making and a process of elimination, I could not stop thinking of ideas for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As previously stated, these stamps are already existing within the Royal Mail; however, I feel as though they do not commemorate the story and original illustrations well so this was to be the aim for my stamp set.
