Soho House<\/a> \u2013 Colour Your Streets is still working its way through a hefty backlist of requests.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been inundated since the beginning,\u201d Weil says. \u201cI think when we started, we thought the opportunity was really for areas within London. And then, soon after we released the first few books, the emails just started to flood in: \u2018Can we have Manchester? Can we have Portsmouth?\u2019 That\u2019s when we realised that there\u2019s a much bigger opportunity actually to map the UK \u2013 that\u2019s our ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n
How do they decide which area to focus on next? \u201cWe sort of triangulate the demand,\u201d he explains. \u201cWe can see what people are searching for \u2013 and I think that\u2019s quite unique about us, because we have a website, we sell directly to a customer, as well as through traditional trade and wholesale. So we can see all these people are searching for Suffolk or, you know, Bury St Edmunds or wherever it might be.<\/p>\n
When we started, we thought\u00a0the opportunity was for\u00a0areas within London, then,\u00a0soon after we released the\u00a0first few books, we realised\u00a0that there\u2019s a much bigger opportunity to map the UK<\/p>\n
We triangulate that with what people say on social media and we also look at population density a little bit to get a sense of which areas are most likely to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once they fix on their next subject, they call on local knowledge to help decide which landmarks to include. \u201cOften there\u2019s a community group, or it could be an organisation, like a business improvement district or a visiting information centre or a charity. In an ideal world, we work with a local community group of some sort who will say: \u2018Yes, these are the landmarks that we think represent this area best.\u2019\u201d Next, working with a range of freelancers, they obtain images and transpose them into illustrations, before pulling them into a digital flatplan, which is then sent off to the printer. Their products are now stored in a warehouse in Nottingham but, when they started out, this used to be an entirely home-based operation. \u201cWe\u2019ve moved on from our daughter\u2019s bedroom,\u201d Barnett jokes.<\/p>\n
One of the first real signs that they were \u201con to something\u201d was when Jeremy Vine, Barnett\u2019s colleague at the BBC, unknowingly bought the Chiswick book for his daughter, who was going off to university. \u201cHe wanted her to have a piece of home,\u201d Barnett\u00a0explains. \u201cHe then blew up the cover of the book and put it on his Channel 5 show and essentially did a free advert for us. I messaged him afterwards and said: \u2018I love that you love this \u2013 this is our publishing project!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Colour Your Streets started out as a labour of love for their son, two years on it has also established a steadfast adult client base. \u201cIt\u2019s another way of telling stories between ages,\u201d Barnett says. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to sit and go back through somewhere you\u2019ve just been with your kid, it\u2019s amazing to have a prompt, and often children draw themselves in and then adults tell a story \u2013 it\u2019s a very nice cross-generational souvenir.\u201d\u201cThat works both up and down,\u201d Weil agrees. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people buying for parents who might have dementia or have moved away from their homes, as well as buying for their children and grandchildren.\u201d Barnett adds: \u201cThe history of colouring is really interesting because it started with maps. It wasn\u2019t for children, necessarily; it was for young-ish adults learning. I think we\u2019re bringing some of that back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking to the future, Colour Your Streets is working on building a \u201cbigger international footprint\u201d, Weil explains. \u201cWe do have some books of other places outside of the UK, but we are hoping to launch more dramatically, if you like, in other English-speaking markets in the near future, as well as publishing other artists\u2026 their artwork should be slightly different to ours, but still very much along the theme of place and colouring-in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two are also planning more brand collaborations; last month, they attended Top Drawer, a craft, design and gift trade show in Olympia, which gave them the opportunity to chat to other brands about how they might work together on a colouring book. Barnett describes this area as a \u201cfast-growing and exciting\u201d part of the company: \u201cOur first bespoke book to go on sale was Fortnum & Mason, which had never had a colouring book in its entire 318-year history. I happened to be at an event there and I thought how incredible it would be to colour in F&M\u2026 it\u2019s such a beautiful book. It really speaks to the history of that building, the fa\u00e7ade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weil adds: \u201cI think what we\u2019d say with the brands is that, yes, it\u2019s a colouring book, but it is a way also to tell their stories and their heritage and what they\u2019re about. Sometimes it\u2019s about the building, but it\u2019s also about where they\u2019ve come from and what\u2019s inside the building as well as what the brands represents. It\u2019s an opportunity for them to tell the story they want to tell in quite an engaging way, in quite a unique way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Weil\u2019s aptitude for colouring-book construction, he has no prior experience in graphic design or publishing. His background is in B2B and data journalism, most recently for the\u00a0Economist, which he left in 2024 to pursue Colour Your Streets as a full-time venture. Barnett, on the other hand, continues to dedicate her mornings to the Today programme, and tackles communications\u00a0and editorial tasks for their company in her afternoons. She is also the author of two non-fiction books, Maternity Service (Penguin) and Period (HQ), so she says that it has been fascinating to learn about \u201cthe other end of the process\u201d.<\/p>\n
She jokes that, as parents, they have the coolest jobs. \u201cOften children can\u2019t understand what their parents do. And it would be very boring to hear that your daddy or\u00a0your mummy were CEOs or co-founders or whatever. But if it\u2019s to do with colouring and pens, they understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ask whether their son is more interested in her colouring gig than her radio one, and she allows that \u201csecond to colouring, broadcasting might be the next most cool job\u2026 But no, it\u2019s very, very lovely building something that our children love. It really is. And it\u2019s been a brilliant industry; we\u2019ve found it extremely friendly\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had lots of people very happy to share their knowledge and advice with us,\u201d Weil agrees. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just a lovely thing to do. You create colouring books of places that people care about. It\u2019s very joyful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In recent years, colouring books have experienced a spike in popularity. Once the realm of young children, self-care…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-248092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}