Designing a bestselling series on colour and pattern

Leaping Hare Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing, commissioned us to design Love Colour by Anna Starmer, a globally renowned colour expert whose clients include Anthropologie, John Lewis, and Boden. Following its success, we went on to design Love Pattern and Colour by Charlotte Abrahams, expanding the concept into a new subject area. Together, the two books establish a distinctive publishing identity that balances inspiration with practicality.

We led design across both titles, creating visually rich formats that celebrated colour while remaining useful and accessible. The ambition was to make professional colour expertise feel inspiring and actionable for a broad audience.

Love Colour combines home, travel, and still life photography with practical colour swatches, enabling readers to create their own palettes. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific colour, with bold openers and large-scale imagery that add pace and breathing space. To extend the book’s usefulness, we designed a removable swatch booklet, giving readers a portable reference to take shopping.

Building on this success, Love Pattern and Colour explores how to use pattern in interiors, from geometrics and botanicals to textures and cultural motifs. Designed as a companion to Love Colour, it carries through the same clarity and vibrancy while giving readers new tools for inspiration. Together, the two titles form a cohesive series that combines creativity with practical application.

Love Colour reached #2 on Amazon’s bestseller list, establishing a strong platform for the series and paving the way for future titles.