We’ve worked with HarperCollins on a broad range of projects, with a relationship dating back to 2001. From web site reviews, to a multi-author blog, to films, and strategic consultancy, we’ve developed a deep knowledge of their business outlook, and a brilliant and productive working relationship.

We were retained by Press Books (the division containing 4th Estate and Perennial) to help develop a number of ideas that were coming out of their weekly meetings. Our job was help filter the good ideas from the not-so-great, and help turn those with legs both into a robust business model and strategy, and a reality.

When we were approached with the idea of authonomy – a crowd-sourced submissions house for unpublished writers – we knew it was a great one. The challenge was how to make sure that the idea reached a potentially skeptical audience – and reassured them that this was a placed built on merit and trust.

We simply used our experience of building community, combined with the principles of user-centric design, and a lot of imagining how authors would feel about their life’s work being uploaded to a publisher site, and helped HarperCollins through the early stages of the project.

Authonomy now receives over a million page impressions a month, and has recenlty announced that three authors acquired by HarperCollins through the site, with print on demand now part of the service offering.

Client: Kate Hyde, HarperCollins

In the middle of 2006, we came up with loads of ideas for things for HarperPress to do with the paperback release of Gautam Malkani’s controversial debut novel Londonstani.

The brief was to do something that would bring the book to the attention of a different set of readers – people who didn’t care (or even know about) the fuss in literary London about the size of the advance paid.

The “big idea” we hoped would get through – but didn’t – was of taking over one of Hounslow’s tube stations, and covering it in graffiti pointing to a MySpace page for Londonstani. (Transport for London weren’t that keen.)

We suggested that the MySpace page be written in character, and would serialise Londonstani, in its entirety, over the course of the 3 months before publication.

At the same time, a quarter of a million samplers featuring the first 4 chapters of the book would be distributed in clubs, record shops, clothes shops and generally in not-very-bookish places. The photos at left are from The Notting HIll Arts Club’s night, Bombay Bronx, run by Radio 1 DJ Nihal.

Sadly neither of the first two happened, and the resulting MySpace page had nothing to do with us. But, the samplers were produced, albeit in smaller numbers, and given out with Don’t Panic.

And we did get to do some graffiti, creating the artwork for the print campaign with one of London’s finest (and nicest) writers, Remi.

At the end, we made a film of Remi, which we think is rather sweet. You can see it on the left, or on YouTube.

Produced by Peter Collingridge. Directed, shot and edited by Andy McGregor. Music by Nick Moore.

Book Promo site for Douglas Coupland’s novel Hey, Nostradamus!, published by Flamingo in 2001. The book deals with a high-school shooting, and its impact on four characters.

• 1988: Cheryl
• 1999: Jason
• 2002: Heather
• 2003: Reg

The promo animated nine sections in total and was lauded by Wieden+Kennedy as “one of the coolest things of 2001″.

Directed by Mickey and Magali Stretton.

A while back, we spent about a year consulting for HarperPress on all sorts of different ideas. Some really big, exciting, change-the-face of publishing stuff, some less ambitious, but more realistic stuff. Some stuff happened, some stuff didn’t.

By far the best thing that did happen was Fifth Estate. It’s a humble, nicely-designed multi-author blog, with the aim of reaching readers in a way that large publishing houses don’t do.

It has a nice tone of voice – in fact, several – but also has the confidence and authority to get over that “oh look we’re blogging” tone that several of its competitors share. It’s decidedly not a corporate website, despite the ownership of the company. In fact, it’s decidedly human.

The brief wasn’t to build a cheap blog, it was something much more ambitious, risky and expensive. Our response was that a blog was the most sensible, affordable, and achievable way to do what they needed to do online: it was a way to test the water quickly, under-the-radar, and if necessary, to fail cheaply.

They far from failed and the project has become one of the most visible and successful of HarperCollins’ digital initiatives.

Still the main reason for its success is not us – it’s HarperPress’s ability to (1) run with an idea that not everyone in the company thought would “fly” and (2) be agile enough to give a brilliant commissioning editor the freedom to make the blog her own.

(We also love the 60-plus “five” images, and the subject heatmap.)

Visit FifthEstate.

Live action and animation film to promote HarperCollins’ literary imprint 4th Estate’s publishing highlights for May – December 2006.

A twenty-something graffiti artist goes out for a day’s work, and finds that every blank media space he passes is an opportunity for creativity of one kind of another.

Written, Directed and Produced by Peter Collingridge. Shot and edited by Andy McGregor. Animation by Paul Galbraith and John Anderson. Model: Richard Bravery. Music: What’s Up With The Underground by Linkwood, with permission.

Press Books – the literary division of HarperCollins, containing 4th Estate and Perennial – approached us to come up with ideas for helping them celebrate the forthcoming 25th anniversary of imprint 4th Estate.

Working with Asylum Films, we created a short film celebrating the books from 25 years of 4th Estate publishing. The film has been released on the web, used in 4th Estate and HarperCollins marketing and anniversary celebrations, and as their Christmas card.

Over a thousand books were used to make the film, which was shot over two weeks in a makeshift studio in North London. Twenty animators worked in shifts to get it made, often sleeping under the set itself.

The film celebrates both 4th Estate’s output, and the world of booklovers: a world made out of stories. The film contains numerous in-jokes and references to the books it features, and everything, from the ships in port to the cinema in Soho to the man fishing in Central Park is made out of books, covers, pages and words.

We also built a site to house the film, along with production stills and time-lapse animations of the animations being shot.

We worked closely with Vimeo, our favourite video-sharing site, to make the film available to all in High Definition, making it beautiful at full screen.

Visit www.25thestate.com to watch and find out more.

Client: Press Books
Producers: Peter Collingridge and James Bridle
Full credits: 25thestate.com/crew/