Hand-picked favourites
Book People were founded in 1988 on the principle of making books affordable for everyone. Our distributors would bring books to you, via your workplace or school. Buying in bulk direct from the publishers and suppliers we were able to offer a range of value-led hand-picked titles for our customers. Following a period of rapid growth and a supported management buy-out, we moved to focus on the brand’s vision.
Working closely with a small insight team we crystallised our brand positioning. My team assisted in creating clarity and consistency across our brand channels. Our mission to be the nation’s number one multi-channel book destination – Bringing value, exclusivity and range to our customers.
/ User Interface and Experience
/ Design System
/ Creative Direction
/ Identity & Positioning
/ Illustration
Our promise
We ran workshops to identify ‘what makes Book People different’ – Price, service, expertise, range, a multi-channel book destination and our promise. Putting our customers at the centre, we wanted to offer them our Book People Promise – Hand-picked favourites at unbelievable prices.
Although I was primarily focusing on the development of the digital brand experience, I oversaw changes across all channels to ensure continuity. We simplified the logo to reduce complexity and amplify the brand. This made for better reproduction at smaller sizes.
Human connection
To identify more ownable assets I developed a suite of icons that were representative of our promise. To create a more human connection with the brand, I explored an illustrative style that was relatable and easily replicated. Composed of simple geometric shapes, new characters could be easily generated, remixed and edited to create a library of ‘Book People’.
Our site is adaptive and built on the Bootstrap framework. This created speed and continuity when collaborating between myself and dev. It also meant that we were able to work in a more agile way, with two-week sprints. Wireframes managed stakeholder expectations and facilitated sign-off.
