With the Penguin Random House merger now done and dusted, a vast community of book industry folk and readers are sighing a sad sigh of disappointment that the company didn’t take the bull by the horns, or the penguin by the beak, and rebrand as Random Penguin. The alternate name must surely trip off the tongue more easily than Penguin Random House, which feels unwieldy and likely to trip up even the most devoted of Penguin and Random House staff when they answer the phone.

The interim logo too feels clunky and just a little bit dejected, the giant penguin with its beak up in the air, facing away from the house that it can never enter but casting an eye over its shoulder just in case something exciting happens. I wonder if that penguin is secretly harbouring the design to crush with its enormous webbed feet all those who enter through Random House’s gates.

So I think it’s time we resurrected the calls for Random Penguin to get a look in. Even if it would be a step too far for it to take over from Penguin Random House in a total rebrand (though oh, how sublime would that be?!), at the very least the new PRH should create a new imprint called Random Penguin. When I mentioned the idea — which has surely already been had by dozens if not hundreds of people before me — on Twitter this morning, Gavin Pugh suggested that it should be a Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint and many others chimed in with support for the nascent Random Penguin brand.

My thoughts are that a Random Penguin imprint would take risks, publish accessible but quirky work that might cross genres or formats, or nibble at the edges of tradition and normality in other ways. It would look for Douglas Adams-ian works, not just books but cross-platform or social reading and creation projects that celebrate the kind of  ingenious creative vision that Adams brought to his fiction, both on the radio and in print.

Random Penguin would be a hothouse for innovation and experimentation, a risk-taker, unafraid to sometimes fail, but always ready to capitalise on projects that make it big. It would invest in creators, not just in books, and be ready to explore markets and communities that are currently underserved.

I’m not saying that PRH isn’t already doing all that. Indeed, I’ve had some fantastic conversations with people who are doing exactly that. But how wonderful would be to use this opportunity to take a playful brand, one that people already love the idea of, and give it shape and form and budget? How could any company resist the idea of Random Penguin? Especially when it would have the coolest logo ever.

So, if you were starting up a Random Penguin imprint, what would you commission or acquire? What does Random Penguin say to you?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/07/01/penguin-random-house-deal-finalised-but-what-of-random-penguin/
www.forbes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-09
121542
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FLZM646JWD43LX2B5XGJTTJVIBB72ZBE
<urn:uuid:ea04d4ad-8ea6-4dc8-bb7a-2eaf3006bcac>
2018-02-19T18:59:52Z
151.101.34.49
text/html
sha1:XL6WBG5K3EQGK5NT3TKIEQ4EYRGNO3N2
<urn:uuid:3b3b78e6-8d4e-410f-93aa-4b5e218626ae>
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/07/01/penguin-random-house-deal-finalised-but-what-of-random-penguin/
response
<urn:uuid:a6023418-27e8-43b0-8ad1-41ab8169d2eb>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-145-70-71.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-09
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf