Before Games…
Wonderbly
I worked at Wonderbly for 9 years, a little startup that we turned into an award winning children’s publisher, making the very best personalised picture books.
I worked in a couple of different roles at Wonderbly but mainly as a Producer in the Story Studio, where I helped to develop new books, manage small creative teams and ship our creations on time.
I was the Producer for 22 books, which have sold over 1.5 million copies, here are a few of my favourites.
-
Where Are You?
A personalised search and find book where you must search for different versions of yourself across the multiverse.
As part of this project I developed a new ‘Jumbo’ format specifically for this book. I wanted to create the biggest spread possible (on the HP Indigo 10000) to hold the detailed illustrations and provide the largest searching space for the child.
-
My Big Sibling
This book has a super simple personalisation system based around the 2 siblings’ ages. We used these inputs to show the children gradually growing up and create a story to celebrate the bond between two siblings.
-
What Kind of You Will You Be?
I came up with the idea for this book to explore children’s differences in a playful way without the use of avatars. The child’s name would become the main character in the book.
Originally I wanted to model the name in 3D, unfortunately we didn’t have the time to adjust the renderer to support this. Instead we switched approach to manipulate a text font. Sometimes simple works best.
-
Wizarding World Personalised Journal
Wizarding World (Harry Potter) approached us to develop a personalised book for their fan club. I lead the project from the Wonderbly side and we created a personalised journal for them featuring a cryptic puzzle that only the book’s owner could solve.
My favourite part of this project was designing an elaborate box for the book, which opened by pulling a snitch from the centre. Here’s a youtuber opening the box!
-
The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home
This was the first book I worked on when I joined Wonderbly. It had so much tech in it that we made a ridiculous video about it (yep that’s me at the end.)
The highlight of this book was integrating a satellite image of the child’s home into the last page of the book. Fun fact, I sent a copy of this book to NASA, they launched it into space, then astronaut Tim Peake read it out from The International Space Station.
-
Kingdom of You
The personalisation system in this book was based around picking your child’s favourite things. Do they love animals and ice cream? Or maybe superhero and pizza?
The book features hilarious food monsters and 64 different endings. Here’s a little video about it, or you can preview it here.
New Preview and Personalisation Journey
In 2022 I became the Senior Product Manager for the Technology Publishing Squad at Wonderbly. I was responsible for creating the roadmap for the ‘middle funnel’ (the part of the website where customers personalise and preview Wonderbly books).
During this time I lead a team of engineers, designers and researchers to design and build a new preview and personalisation journey to support the Publishing team’s plan to move into new product categories.