/ Works

BeRead

A disruptive publishing consultancy built from the ground up, brand identity, activations and pitch materials for two of UK publishing's most senior strategists.

/ Overview:

Client

Merle & Fergus, Co-Founders, BeRead

Year

2025 - Present

Role

Brand & Strategy
Campaign & Spaces
Pitch Materials
Brand Guidelines

BeRead was founded by Merle and Fergus. Merle spent 14 years at Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, leading brand for James Patterson and Jamie Oliver. Fergus spent 15 years at Headline, Penguin Random House and Pan Macmillan, working with Maggie O'Farrell, Michael Palin and Robert Harris. Between them, they had shaped some of the most commercially successful publishing campaigns in the industry, and they knew exactly what independent authors were missing.

The publishing world has a gap. Aspiring authors are overwhelmed, under-served and offered generic solutions that don't get them where they want to be. BeRead was built to change that: a full-funnel consultancy bringing the editorial rigour and commercial thinking of a Big Five publisher to authors who deserve better.

Saltco was brought in from the start to build the brand, design the activations and create the commercial pitch materials the business needed to go to market.

A brand designed to look unlike anything else in publishing.

Most publishing brands lean on heritage, serif type, muted palettes, a quiet nod to literary tradition. BeRead needed to feel like something different: accessible to authors, credible to publishers, and visually unlike anything else in the sector. Saltco developed the full brand strategy, visual identity and tone of voice from the ground up. The identity is built around a bold geometric 'B' mark, a confident coral-red palette and a clean typographic system: a brand that holds its own at a world-leading publishing conference as naturally as it does on a London Tube platform.

Brand guidelines were built to carry that consistency across every context, spanning logo usage, colour, typography, imagery direction and application across digital, print, conference stands and physical spaces.

From keynote stages to Kings Cross activations.

Merle and Fergus's world is conferences, keynote stages and the authors they work with, so the activations needed to show up there. Saltco designed exhibition stands and on-stage visuals for leading publishing conferences, putting BeRead in front of the industry's decision-makers from the moment the brand launched. Custom BeRead Benches (warm wood, red upholstery, built as reading furniture) were installed at Kings Cross canalside and Regents Park. OOH advertising across London Underground stations put the brand in front of authors, publishers and literary agents on their daily commute.

Tote bags, reading lights and printed campaign collateral ran across every activation, each piece considered, each surface branded, all of it designed and produced by Saltco from concept through to installation.

Pitch materials that win authors and get them in front of publishers.

A consultancy built to get authors published lives or dies on its ability to win clients and open doors at publishing houses. Saltco designed the pitch decks BeRead use to bring new authors on board, and the sales decks used to present those authors to publishers and booksellers. Both were built with the same thinking as the brand: clear, confident and designed to make the right impression in the rooms that matter.

BeRead launched with a brand, a physical presence across London and a set of commercial tools that most startups spend years piecing together. The partnership continues.