Building on a hugely successful few years since joining Bonnier Books UK, the imprint Black & White is celebrating the next chapter of its publishing with a brand-new identity and logo designed by Tom Leach, creative director at Evoke.
The first Black & White title to bear the new logo will be I Wish I Knew by Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller and the UK’s bestselling poet of 2023, Donna Ashworth, publishing in paperback for the first time on 29th February 2024.
Reflecting both the imprint’s long-standing heritage and forward-thinking ambitions, the new logo represents a modern, open imprint that lives up to its name with an uncompromising commitment to quality, integrity, and entertainment.
The flagship commercial imprint of Bonnier Books UK’s Black & White Publishing Group and with a growing team based in both Edinburgh (where Black & White were founded) and in London, Black & White publishes a breadth of geographically diverse, award-winning titles across genres including biography, sport, cookery, lifestyle, general non-fiction, commercial fiction, YA and poetry. The imprint is also home to a popular Scots language list – Itchy Coo – publishing books in Scots for young people.
Recent successes have included Donna Ashworth’s Wild Hope, which was a Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller and marks the milestone first Number 1 bestseller for the imprint; The Hebridean Baker at Home by Coinneach MacLeod; The Hike Life by Roz Purcell, a Number 1 Irish bestseller on release and winner of Bookstation Lifestyle Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.
The imprint was acquired by Bonnier Books UK in 2021, and, as of January 2023, is part of The Black & White Publishing Group, the newest division of Bonnier Books UK, headed up by Managing Director, Tim Whiting.
Tim Whiting said: ‘At Black & White Publishing Group, the Black & White imprint is the home for our bestselling commercial fiction and non-fiction publishing, sitting alongside our start-up imprints that focus on their own areas of expertise. As such, I have always felt the new logo needed to convey elegance, freshness and simplicity, maintaining a recognition of the important legacy of the imprint’s roots in Scotland, as well as the dynamism of our commissioning both in London and Edinburgh. Tom has perfectly captured all of that in his unique design. The division is already growing fast, with a significant amount of that growth coming from our commercial publishing and I could not be more excited about launching this logo into the world, heralding a new period of national and international growth for the list.
Tom Leach, creative director at Evoke said: ‘Black & White’s new brand identity needed to be modern, bold, commercial, classy, fresh and memorable, and to have mass appeal. It needed to convey the imprint’s trustworthy heritage and expertise as well as their new ambition, energy, confidence and innovation. We created a bold and iconic solution that is ‘black and white’ pure and simple. Inspired by the combining of the original Scottish publishing house, alongside it’s new London team, the new logo has a nod to the brand’s history. The new design is clear, open and straightforward, reflecting the brand itself.’
Highlights for 2024 include: The Theatre of Glass and Shadows by Anne Corlett, an atmospheric tale set in an alternate London where the mysterious Theatre District rules itself; Somewhere in the Sunset by international bestseller Estelle Maskame, which is the first New Adult romance book from the author of the hugely successful DIMILY series; Hell’s Bells by Jill Johnson, the sequel to the tantalizing Devil’s Breath, which was a BBC Two Between The Covers pick in 2023; I Wish I Knew by Donna Ashworth, words of comfort and hope publishing for the first time in paperback; alongside a wide range of commercial fiction, non-fiction, poetry, lifestyle, gift and humour.
