Back in the UK and I stick together 16 pieces of A4 paper as a physical proof of concept. It looks big enough to be impressive, but not too unwieldy to stick on a wall. I see how the embryonic timeline can be concertina folded into an A3 sized ‘wallbook’.

Armed with the blank dummy, I quickly arrange to meet the two people crucial to the success of the Wallbook project.

First is Andy Forshaw - an illustrator from Beckenham, Kent, who drew the amazing artwork for  What on Earth Happened? and What on Earth Evolved? Next is Will Webb, freelance book designer who used to be the art director at Bloomsbury Publishing.  

I realise that the success of the What on Earth? Wallbook also requires input from one or two others. I arrange to meet Rebecca Burton - an unflappable genius for distribution, sales and marketing who I once worked with in my days running Oxford-based Immersive Education.

Finally, I approach my two indefatigable editorial champions at Bloomsbury Publishing - the fulcrums of the What on Earth? Publishing team - Richard Atkinson (commissioning editor) and Natalie Hunt (editor).

After several sessions spent gesticulating wildly over  the blank 2.3 metre long scroll of sellotaped paper, I find that, by early February 2010, the kernel of What on Earth Publishing Ltd is born...

NEXT >>> Design, scale, streams...

From idea to concept

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