Client
Heritage
Industry
Publishing
Year
2023
Timeline
12 weeks
Team
4 specialists
01 / The brief
Heritage has published Moroccan literature in Arabic and French since 1963. Its identity didn’t show it. We redrew the house from its own archive: marque, type, spines, all twelve imprints.
02 / The challenge
Six decades of ad-hoc decisions: twelve imprint logos, no spine system, covers that read dated rather than classic. Younger readers walked past the shelf.
03 / The approach
We redrew the 1963 colophon rather than replacing it and paired it with a bilingual type system, Arabic and Latin at equal weight. A strict spine and cover grid makes any Heritage book recognizable at three meters.
+ Fig. 01 · Identity in progress
04 / The impact
backlist sales after reissue series
imprints under one identity
international rights deals in year one
05 / Palette
Click a swatch to copy its hex
06 / Deliverables
“ Booksellers started facing our spines out. Nobody asked them to. Sixty years in, the house feels young again, and my predecessors would still recognize it. The backlist moves again, the reissues sell out their runs, and readers write to us about the covers. ”
Leila Mansouri · Editorial Director, Heritage
07 / How we got there
01 /
Archive
Three weeks in the vault, cataloguing sixty years of marques, covers, and type.
02 /
Strategy
Positioning that treats the backlist as an asset, not baggage.
03 /
Redraw
The 1963 colophon rebuilt for screens, spines, and foil stamps.
04 /
Systemize
Cover grids and bilingual type rules any future designer can hold.
+ Fig. 02 · Delivered system
The record · more proof, next door
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