Ladybird: A True Publishing Brand is 100

Today Penguin celebrates the centenary of the registration of the Ladybird logo in 1915. It was very interesting to watch the recent televised documentary on the remarkable story of this format and its history. 

The real Ladybird success, came with the introduction in 1940, of a pocket-sized mini-hardback book measuring four-and-a-half by seven inches and based on a standard 56 page folded format, which was cut to size with no waste. On one side of the spread were high quality full-colour illustrations by the likes A. J. Macgregor, Charles Tunnicliffe, Allen Seaby, Harry Wingfield and Martin Aitchison, whilst on the other side the text was simple clean and engaging with verse initially by W. Perring.

The characters created by Ladybird captivated the children of the time and the books were sold in not just bookshops but newsagent and the grocers. Most children in the late 50s, 60s and early 70s were avid readers and collectors of the cheap, simple and distinctive books, which often depicted the post war model British way of life and the innocence of the children Peter and Jane at play, the housewife Mum and breadwinner Dad.

Labybird went further than the Famous Five, Just William and other fictional series of the day. They covered not just stories based on family life, but introduced many to the wonders of nature and history and even covered science and engineering subjects. The series were colour banded, uniform and filled both the shelves and minds of many children in a way that has yet to be surpassed. In addition, all the books were priced the same and were aimed at being affordable and accessible for children to buy themselves.

Would the format and style have adapted to the changing marketplace or was the changes introduced under Pearson inevitable and the death of the design form inevitable? Was DK the closest to matching their audience? Are today’s collectors merely remembering their lost childhoods, or paying respect to what was once a winning format, a clean price point and distinctive brand?

Can we learn today from the Ladybird pre Pearson? Today’s children’s books come in all sizes, have no price point and often the character is the brand. Will tomorrow’s books continue the same, or will someone revisit what once worked and adapt it to today’s growing digital and physical book markets? 

Digitisation - It's Not About 'Books'

Today we stand at many believe is the digital evolution of literature, moving from paper to bytes. Many others believe that much will remain the same, after all we, ‘all love, grew up with and where educated by books’. We now ask if the evolution is about books or about the content itself.

In the mid nineties only the few would have envisaged the impact the Internet was going to have on all our lives. Then it was no more than a dirt track and many doubted it could raise its game, but it did and the only limiting factor on its path was not technology, but culture and our ability to adopt, adapt and utilise it on mass.

We have assumed digital is the same as physical and have created programmes and devices to migrate one form to the other. We now have to ask if that’s wise?

We were once invited, along with a mismatch of what appeared no more than teenagers, to a conference held by a global broadcaster. They asked us what they need to do differently and they listened intently to the answers they were given. The biggest change is that the global broadcaster now sees themselves as a rights, manager and owner not a broadcaster. Other media companies are now starting to change their views as change continues and divisions blur and are redefined.

Now we would ask the average book publisher what they see themselves as? We would guess that 'rights manager and owner' wouldn’t be on the tip of most tongues. Some would say that publishing isn’t about books it’s simply about content and rights and understanding the market and channel to it. If we were to look at the trade as a rights trade what would that mean moving forward?

Why do we presume that the physical content will merely morph into the digital. History has surely taught us that media survives but has to adapt to new forms. Fiction is not about books of 75,000 words or 250 pages, its more about telling a good story that captivates, engages and stimulates readers. Why does this have to be any specific length?

The challenge we may now face is to create short stories that are suited to new media. Some may opt to serialise something that was never written to be serialised and in doing so merely create a half way house which is neither one or the other. However, to support short stories may mean that we have to accept that old skills that were honed to the book may not always adapt.