Penguin Random House - Judges Research

John Hamilton

John Hamilton joined Penguin in 1997 as the Penguin Art Director and was the driving force behind the penguin dropping there orange spine from there fiction range. Hamilton and Jim Stoddart combined to organise Penguins Seventieth Birthday Campaign, where they invited 70 designers, artists, illustrators to create a cover each, these had to be designed within seven days and each designers was paid £70 for the cover. Hamilton is also responsible for directing Penguins hardback imprints such as Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Michael Joseph and Penguin Ireland.

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Joanna Prior

Joanna has had a guiding hand on Penguin’s design for many years. In her role as Marketing and Publicity Director of Penguin UK (until July 2009) she helped to position Penguin’s books for the marketplace through their cover design and through some innovative and award-winning marketing campaigns. For the past sixteen years she has also run Penguin’s art committee, which is responsible for the comprehensive collection of text-based art that adorns the meeting rooms and corridors of Penguin’s offices at 80 Strand. In her current role as Managing Director of Penguin General Books she is responsible for publishing the prize winners and bestsellers, including Nick Hornby, Zadie Smith, Antony Beevor, John le Carré and Colm Tóibín.

Jim Stoddart 

After graduating in Sheffield, Jim took a placement at Bill Smith Studio in London, which turned into a job designing record and CD covers for such labels as EMI, Virgin, BMG, Mute and Trojan Records. Five years later he joined Penguin, where he worked as a cover designer for eighteen months, and then he went to work with Chris Ashworth under Lewis Blackwell at Getty Images for twelve months. In 2001 he returned to Penguin as Art Director of Penguin Press, where he has overseen the redesign and rebranding of Penguin Classics, Penguin Modern Classics and Pelican Books, as well as designing and art-directing covers for Penguin’s Allen Lane hardback imprint, the Particular Books imprint and Penguin non-fiction paperbacks.

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