Reach updates romance novels

Harlequin Mills & Boon is relaunching the Mills & Boon brand this week, redesigned by Bristol design consultancy Reach Partnership in Design.

The book redesign provides a newly recognisable identity for the romantic novel brand using colour-coding for each series. Each month 30 books are published across five series, each aimed at a slightly different target audience.

“While the editorial had moved on the brand had lost some of its relevance to the women of today; for some the brand was something to be secretive and embarrassed by or was even a barrier to purchase,” explains a Reach spokeswoman.

“Cover designs had been evolved in an incoherent way, meaning consumers found it difficult to understand what type of editorial each series represented,” she says.

The consultancy was briefed to update the brand and enhance its positioning as the market leader in romance fiction. A part of the repositioning was to move the brand towards a more female personality.

Reach has also been invited to handle similar brand re-alignments for the publisher’s sister brands in Italy and Poland.