PQ Blackwell Launches MILKbooks.com

After ten years of creating internationally bestselling books and working with award-winning photographers and luminaries such as Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, New Zealand-based PQ Blackwell, the creators of MILK (Moments, Inspiration, Love & Kinship) is now set to launch a website that will make it possible for anybody to create an exquisite tailor made book whether it be a life story, an elegant photo book or an ambitious art book or album.

Inspiration for the project came to PQ Blackwell’s founder, Geoff Blackwell, when his father turned 70. “To mark dad’s special day my family and I decided to make him a book that combined our favourite photographs of moments shared together, and then each of us – right down to the youngest grandchild – wrote him a message telling him how much we love him. It was a beautiful little book and giving it to him was one of the happiest moments of our lives.”

The experience made such an impact on Blackwell that he and his team of award-winning designers and editors have spent the last 18 months creating a state-of-the-art website that will enable “ordinary people to tell their extraordinary stories” and to create what Blackwell believes will be ‘the world’s best tailor made books’. Exquisitely produced objects that feature designer fabric binding, art paper, multiple editorial and design frameworks and digital versions that allow people to add video to tell their stories.

“Milk Tailor Made Books is our most ambitious project yet but it is founded on a simple love for making beautiful books, and a belief that every life is precious, and every life has defining moments that are worth recording and celebrating,” says Blackwell.

MILKbooks.com has signed Florence Broadhurst as one of its designer fabric collections available for exclusive use in its books.

MILKbooks.com launches on 1 April in New Zealand, with Australia, UK, North America and the rest of the world to follow. www.milkbooks.com

About PQ Blackwell and M.I.L.K

The company behind MILK Tailor Made Books is PQ Blackwell, a New Zealand-based creator and publisher of internationally award-winning illustrated books. Distinguished by their editorial excellence, design and production quality, PQ Blackwell’s books have featured on bestsellers lists around the world, including the New York Times and have won numerous awards including prestigious D&AD Yellow Pencil, Graphis, Communication Arts and PDN awards, the Deutsch Photo Book Prize and the Supreme Award for New Zealand Book Design.

PQ Blackwell originally came to prominence with the international launch of M.I.L.K. – a collection of images founded on humanity and selected from submissions from 17,000 photographers in 164 countries that became the basis for a bestselling series of books with international sales of 4 million copies, and was exhibited at venues around the world, including New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the Sydney Opera House and London’s Science Museum.

PQ Blackwell now collaborates with some of the world’s leading photographers and individuals. The company’s authors include Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Albert Watson, Andrew Zuckerman, Tim Flach and award-winning New Yorker photographer Platon. Its projects include New York Times bestseller Conversations with Myself by Nelson Mandela with a foreword by Barack Obama published in 29 languages in 2010 and Wisdom: The Greatest Gift One Generation Can Give to Another by Andrew Zuckerman.