Since its founding in 1920, Scholastic has grown into one of the largest international corporations engaged in the publication, sale, and distribution of books, magazines, and educational materials for schools. The most popular “brainchild” of the company is the Harry Potter series of books.
Scholastic was founded by Maurice R. Robinson in 1920. On October 22, 1920, a periodical for students of Pennsylvania high schools appeared, and the first book with the imprint Scholastic was published in 1926, it was a collection of student stories.
In 1961, Scholastic began producing educational and informative books that helped students master educational material in a fun way, gave them the opportunity to expand their knowledge in areas of interest, and stimulated the development of intellectual abilities and critical thinking.
In the 1990s, toy books in the I Spy, Goosebumps, Animorphs, and Captain Underpants series appeared for the visual generation. Later came graphic novels and book projects with audio and video versions.
For a hundred years Scholastic has created many projects to motivate children and teenagers to read – these include exhibitions, fairs, festivals, and contests. The company’s most significant contribution to education was Scholastic Book Clubs. A child could choose a book of interest, fill out an order form, which could be found in every Scholastic magazine, and give it to the teacher. The teacher collected orders from all his students and sent them to the publisher.
Today, millions of U.S. teachers are members of the club, which continues the tradition of classroom libraries and is supported by writers, community organizations, and parents. Scholastic conducts research activities aimed at retaining an interest in reading, creating theoretical support for school literacy development.
Today, there are 30 versions of Scholastic magazine aimed at students ages 6 to 18. Headquartered in New York City, the publisher has a U.S. audience of 25 million readers.
What is Scholastic?
Scholastic is the name of an American corporation, involved in publishing and distribution of books for children of all ages. Established in 1920, today Scholastic operates all over the globe and offers its books to almost 4 million teachers, 80 million parents, and 55 million students from more than 100 thousand schools.
In terms of visual identity, Scholastic has managed to represent its purpose and values in the minimalistic yet distinctive logo. The badge hasn’t changed much throughout the second half of the company’s history, but it has adapted to all the trend tendencies successfully.
The logo of the world-famous book publishing company, introduced in 1982, featured a laconic combination of an enlarged emblem and a wordmark beyond it, set on a plain dark background. The emblem depicted a minimalistic image of an open book, drawn in white, with the lettering executed in the title case of a classy serif font, using a red shade for the bars. The background of the logo was set in black, making up the most powerful tricolor palette.
The Scholastic logo from 1990 featured a composition, based on a solid red horizontally stretched narrow rectangular banner with the white emblem and a white uppercase lettering on it. The emblem of the company was a schematic drawing of an open book, and the inscription was set in a lightweight and elegant serif typeface. The red banner was usually placed on a solid black background.
For a couple of years, starting in 1994, the Scholastic logo (which didn’t change its style or composition) was being placed on more colorful backgrounds, depicting the graphical representation of the company’s most famous projects.
Another redesign of 1994 has added some volume to the Scholastic visual identity by making the delicate uppercase white lettering on a red rectangular banner shadowed. The shadows behind the capital letters of the wordmark were not bold or dark, which made the whole composition look deeper and more vivid.
The 1997 version of the Scholastic logo was polished and cleaned up. The contrast of the red and white became stronger due to the strengthening of the character’s contours, and the removal of the shadow. The red of the banner also was slightly alternated, gaining a scarlet tone. Another change was made to the typeface of the wordmark, with the letters still in serif, but the shapes horizontally stretched.
One more scholastic badge was created in 2002, and the company has returned to it a couple more times throughout the years. It was the same red and white banner with a book and an uppercase inscription, but the shade of red in this version was more coral, and the lines of the characters got thinner. There was one more badge, used by the brand back then — a black-and-white logo with an emboldened and narrowed inscription.
In 2003 some gradients were added to the Scholastic logo, darkening the sides of the banner, and making it look more dramatic, especially when placed on a solid black background. As for the main elements of the badge — they stayed untouched.
The Scholastic logo from 2008 featured a darker shade of red for the banner’s background and thin elegant lines of the uppercase inscription, which was set in the same typeface as before, but for some reason looked more lightweight and elegant.
The red Scholastic banner was placed on a red background in 2019. The interesting thing here was the chosen shades of the same color — with the darker and calmer one for the banner and a brighter and more intense tone for the main background. The banner in this version has a thin white outline.
In 2019 the Scholastic brand gained a new version of the logo, which kept the original composition, but gained a solid black background and an uppercase “Entertainment” tagline in light red serif characters, which looked a bit hazy due to the soft tone.
The super elegant uppercase lettering from the primary Scholastic logo is set in a classy serif typeface with flared bars and sharpened ends of the lines: the closest font to the one, used in this insignia, is probably Aviano Seriftrade, but there is also something in common with Columnatrade and Tripletttrade.
As for the color palette of the Scholastic visual identity, it is based on a powerful and bright combination of red and white, which is sometimes accompanied by black for a more dramatic and strong look.