Mark Boulton Design

Five Simple Steps is a small publisher owned and managed by the founders of Mark Boulton Design. Their aim is simple; to publish ‘must-read’ books for the web professional written by world-renowned authors or leading thinkers in their field.

Every Five Simple Steps book arms the reader with practical advice for working in that subject area-eg web design or information architecture. Rather than adopting a corporate tone, every book is written in an easy to read, friendly style and has the author’s tone of voice. Given that each book is designed and produced by the Mark Boulton Design team, it’s no coincidence that the design of each book and its packaging is beautiful, simple and clean.

Humble Beginnings

Five Simple Steps started life as a bunch of tutorials on Mark's blog several years ago. In the summer of 2005, just before the first @media conference in London, he wrote an article called, 'Five Simple Steps to Better Typography'. It was a five part series and presented some simple facts about typography that he felt needed to be addressed, particularly on the web. Within two months, the traffic on his site had doubled.

Following this, Mark got the idea to produce a book from these blog posts and 'A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web' was born. Several years and lots of late nights and candle burning later, a pdf of 'Designing for the Web' went on sale in February 2009 and sold 3,000 copies in the first fortnight. The positive feedback for the book was overwhelming:

'In case you were wondering? http://fivesimplesteps.co.uk is the BEST web design book you can buy' - Andy Clarke

'I've been watching the previews on Flickr and now that I've actually had the chance to read the full book, I can declare it a triumph. It doesn't feel preachy or stodgy, or conversely, too light and insubstantial. Mark's tone strikes the right balance, and is engaging from the start.' - Jon Hicks, http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/designing-for-the-web

'Mark Boulton's Designing for the Web is better than sex. Of course, being a magazine, I've never had sex.' - Alistapart

Branching out

Riding on the back of this success, a limited print run of 1,500 paperbacks went on sale and all but several dozen of these have now sold. All aspects of the distribution of the paperback has been handled by the Mark Boulton Design team up until now, which has been challenging at times but very fulfilling to see books being shipped to far flung corners of the world!

It became clear to Mark and Emma that Five Simple Steps was a brand with legs, so they began speaking to new authors whilst Mark got down to the business of writing his second book, 'A Practical Guide to Designing Grid Systems' which is due out in the Spring. 2010 sees the launch of at least 5 confirmed titles and after a low key trial at the latter end of 2009, the brand is looking to move into other avenues - workshops, webinars and perhaps even other merchandise. However, the USP remains the same: practical advice in a friendly, easy to digest format.

Five Simple Steps has come along way in 5 years and this looks set to continue. Not bad for something that started life as a couple of articles on Mark's blog.

Responsibilities: Well, pretty much everything really. Oh, except the printing; we didn't do that.