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The identity for the UK’s National Year of Reading 2026 recasts reading as the way to go deeper into something you already love – whether that is cooking, coding or climate action – rather than a duty to be shouldered. “By pulling from vernacular language, we created the ‘Go All In’ name to inherently function as an active call to action,” Tom Munckton, Executive Creative Director at London-based brand studio Fold7Design, tells us. “It acts as a natural sign-off for every application; even in the absence of a headline, the name alone spurs the audience to move.”
The National Year of Reading 2026 is a UK-wide movement aiming to reverse a steep decline in reading enjoyment, and rather than leaning on the duty to read more, it meets people at their passions – sport, science, music, gaming or fashion – and lets the reading follow. Fold7Design was brought in for the strategy, visual identity and design system, with a further demand built into the brief: it had to be open enough for any organisation, from a tech giant to an independent bookseller, to pick up the Go All In symbol and run with it. With the name carrying so much meaning, the system around it could be pared back to almost nothing for the partners deploying it. “This strategic decision drastically simplified the visual and verbal system,” he explains. “Because the name itself does the heavy lifting, the design system was freed up to be incredibly clean, direct and effortless for partners to deploy.”
At the centre sits a mark the agency calls the Open Book – a shape abstract enough to sidestep the obvious picture of literature yet still look like a book folded at the spine. Its curve opens an area to nest the brand name and a span wide enough to hold or pass through any subject, so the same mark can flex around the passions that already excite an audience, from sport and science to music, gaming or fashion. It also pulls the eye in the direction of the message. “The mark serves as a visual manifestation of the brand’s core philosophy,” he continues, “it acts directionally, ushering the viewer’s eye downward and inward – inviting them to go all in on whatever topic they are exploring.”
The wordmark presses the same idea into the three short words. Fold7Design stacked GO, ALL and IN across three lines in a heavy, condensed cut and closed the lockup on a full stop, so it’s compact and portable enough to live on a library banner or a school sticker at either extreme. The full stop gives the mark a sense of definitive impact.
The typography is all set in Clash Display, a bold, modern display font that’s distributed for free by Indian Type Foundry. It was chosen so that any local authority, educational institution or retailer up and down the UK could work with the toolkit without a licence. Munckton is pointed about how it is used. Where similar initiatives have used uppercase to cut through and only ended up shouting, Fold7Design went for sentence case outside of the wordmark. “Clash Display commands authority beautifully in sentence case, striking a tone that is urgent yet highly accessible,” he explains.
“The brand’s primary colour anchor is actually black, which establishes a sharp, contemporary and grounded aesthetic,” Munckton details. The vivid yellow, green and pink secondary palette shifts depending on the literary mood or the audience in front of it. “During the design process, we spoke a lot about passing ‘the Brixton test,’” he tells us. “We knew that if a brand designed to encourage reading could genuinely appeal to a kid walking down Brixton High Street, we would successfully break new ground.” The high-contrast, energetic result moves the whole thing away from institutional worthiness and more towards contemporary street culture – the difference, in the end, between being told to read and being invited to go all in.