Coles Notes
October 1st, 2007
Designer: George French
Date: 1948 – Present
Client: Coles Bookstore/Southam Press/Chapters Inc./Indigo Music & Books
Jack and Carl Cole, orphaned brothers from Detroit, opened their first Coles Books store near the University of Toronto in the mid 1930s. A decade later the first Coles Notes was published. As the story goes, a number of local high school students were having difficulties translating a french text, so the Cole brothers hired a translator and published the results. After selling nearly a thousand copies within a matter of days, Coles Notes was born.
Since the 1940s more than 80,000,000 copies of Coles Notes have been sold on five different continents. Each copy features the instantly recognizable black and yellow striped background with either a green or red foreground (except for the special Shakespeare editions which feature red and black stripes only). As an interesting sidebar: Coles Notes predates CliffsNotes (the American equivalent) by a decade. For a time, CliffsNotes were simply Coles Notes with different covers; that is until Jack Cole’s heirs denied CliffNotes Inc. the rights to use Coles Notes content without using the classic Coles Notes covers. CliffsNotes refused, and began publishing their own content.
If anybody has any information on the original cover designer(s) we would love to know about it.
-John Ryan
Entry Filed under: Book/Magazine,Graphics
5 Comments Add your own
1. Bruce Cole | November 17th, 2007 at 08:18
I am the son of Carl Cole, one of the Cole brothers. Cliffs notes payed a royalty to Coles for the use of Coles Notes. It was Jack Cole who was friends with Cliff. They met during World War II, and that is how Cliffs Notes started. The design of the covers was done by a gentleman by the name of George French. I hope this helps you and if you need any more information please contact me.
2. Rick Chambers | July 28th, 2008 at 09:57
I have a booklet entitled “Notes on Lorna Doone” shown with “Cole’s” Toronto, Ontario, 370 Bloor St.W. and 726 Yonge St.
There is no date shown and it is ornage with black stripes. Is this an edition form the Cole brothers?
3. Goal Setting & Winnin&hellip | March 30th, 2009 at 22:30
[...] The Success Principles. I just finished chapter 7, Unleash the Power of Goal-Setting. The Cole’s Notes version of the chapter is: all your goals should be measurable; how much, by when. I realized [...]
4. Madeline Morgan | July 8th, 2010 at 23:05
Goal setting is very important specially if you want to plan long term.:”,
5. Arianna Torres | July 20th, 2010 at 18:22
Goal setting is very important if you want something to be done in a short period of time.`~-
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed