Barnes Children’s Literature Festival

Branding, Website, Print & Merchandise

Silent Deer are super proud to have worked with the Barnes Children’s Literature Festival since was born back in 2015. Now the UK’s largest dedicated children’s literature festival, it’s fun-filled-to-the-brim with some of children’s literature’s biggest and best loved authors and illustrators. The concept was conceived at school gate amongst like-minded parents who believe in books: a literature festival for families and their friends, curated entirely by the families.

The founder and festival director, Amanda Brettagh’s wished to incorporate the infamous Barnes pond scene and landmark buildings including the resident pair of swans if possible in an illustrative format that could be updated each year. We triumphantly accomplished this and more – setting the tone for the festival which has become a signature ident with followers in the local area, nationally and internationally. Each year the original logo has been re-worked to featured well-known illustrators; Axel Sheffler (2017), Judith Kerr (2018) celebrating 50 years of the ‘Tiger Who Came To Tea’, Lauren Child (2019), Judith Kerr’s Mog (2020), Helen Oxenbury (2021), Rob Biddulph (2022), Cressida Cowell (2023), Quentin Blake (2024) and Nadia Shireen (2025).

Silent Deer has continued to produce all content for online digital platforms, print and promotional material for 11 consecutive years and currently working on 2026 programme. The festival started out as a one day event but now compromises of 12 days FREE London Primary Schools Programme, giving away 21,000 free places to London state schools, in the run-up to the two day weekend public event – packed with a huge line-up of children’s authors and illustrator events. All this content needs listing and promoting. Each year the items required range from printed programmes to partnership proposals, from signage graphics big and small, to volunteers aprons and much much much more!

The festival’s website needed a bright, lively and dynamic feel to appeal to children and parents alike yet be simple to navigate through the 100+ event details. Needless to say the site has grown somewhat organically over time as the festival has increased in size and complexity. We’ve worked closely throughout with online developers Spicy Apple updating the website each year to cater for the festival’s jam-packed schedule of amazing events.

View the website here

Testimonial

“Silent Deer has got what it takes to exceed your expectations every time. They seem to know straight away what we need and they go the extra mile – and a half! – every single day for us while dealing with our outrageous deadlines, our ambitious ideas and our skinny budgets with bucketloads of patience and big agency professionalism. And not only that they’re great fun to work with so if working with people you like is important to you then our advice is do not hesitate to give them a call.”

Amanda Brettargh, Founder & Owner