Teach Yourself Books is a self-instruction book series launched in 1938 by the English Universities Press, a subsidiary of Hodder & Stoughton. The imprint has undergone several visual identities over its decades of publishing, with cover designs changing repeatedly to reflect the era and the publisher’s evolving approach to the series.
Design and History
The Teach Yourself series has always used a common design across all of its books, a practice that dates back to its earliest titles. Older volumes were issued with a distinctive yellow and blue dust jacket, with black used in earlier years. Over time, the publisher changed the cover design several times, moving through an all-blue paperback format during the 1980s and a larger photographic or painted front cover with a black stripe containing the title in the 1990s. In the 21st century, the imprint adopted a yellow rounded rectangle with a black border as its primary logo. A total redesign of the books followed for 2010. [1]
The Teach Yourself books were published from 1938 until 1966 under the English Universities Press imprint, which was owned by Hodder & Stoughton. Books in the series have been published since 1966 by Hodder & Stoughton, which shifted the format to trade paperbacks in 1973. [2] The imprint is currently part of Hodder and Stoughton Publishers. [3]
While the series’ cover designs have been documented across its history, no verifiable source confirms a specific 1969 logo designed by a person named Peter Cope. The Peter Cope associated with Teach Yourself is a technology author who wrote titles for the imprint in the 2000s, not a graphic designer of its 1960s identity. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The yellow and blue color scheme of the early dust jackets and the later yellow rounded rectangle logo are the most consistently documented visual elements of the Teach Yourself identity. The yellow rounded rectangle with a black border became the imprint’s primary logo in the 21st century, though no official source documents a specific symbolic meaning behind the choice of colors or shape. [1]
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