JOHN BLAKE
A brand identity for John Blake, a commercial non-fiction imprint of Bonnier Books UK ↗ that publishes a broad mix of extraordinary real-life stories, biographies, true crime, alternative histories and gift and humour.
John Blake has been creating bestsellers since it began in 1991. It was acquired by Bonnier Books UK in 2016. Bestsellers include Charles Bronson’s autobiography, Being Jordan by Katie Price and The Peaky Blinders: The Real Story by Carl Chinn.
The refreshed brand identity needed to appeal to not only John Blake’s key consumer female target audience but also agents and authors in the industry. The brief for the creative solution was to be simple, modern and clean while still featuring the initials ‘JB’ and reflect authority and authenticity – in order to have broad appeal rather than focussing on just one genre of the imprint.
To reflect this, we created a typographic solution that uses a speech mark for the dot of the ‘i’. A simple, subtle but important feature that represents those real and compelling voices as summed up in their tagline: ‘Books as real as you are’. The typeface is modern and clear and combines with a colour palette that brings a touch of warmth to an imprint that has a lot of serious but incredible subjects to publish.
The first John Blake title to feature the new logo is ‘The Stone Age: Sixty Years of The Rolling Stones’ by music journalist Lesley Ann Jones.