A UK puzzle brand that began with friends around a table.

Cloudberries tells its origin story on its own website. On the “Our story” page, the company says that on a rainy day in 2015 it discovered that friends, wine and a jigsaw puzzle added up to a lot of fun — but that the cottage scene on the box was a bit boring. It says it set out to change that, and the site’s rolling strapline reads “Beautiful puzzles for adults. Since 2015.” The homepage puts the same idea more briefly: “Puzzles. But better.”

The business behind the brand is a limited company. The terms of service and privacy policy on the website name Cloudberries Ltd as the operator, and the Companies House register records that company as incorporated on 11 May 2017 and active, with its nature of business listed as the retail sale of games and toys in specialised stores and as web portals. The register lists Steven Vickers as a director since incorporation and Karin Ingesten Vickers as a director since 4 November 2019.

The company frames the puzzles as a break from screens. Its mission statement says it wants to give people a break from endless scrolling and to bring some joy back to “the great indoors”, and it presents jigsaws as a hobby and a calm daily habit rather than a children’s pastime. Cloudberries says its puzzles are made with FSC-certified paper, and its bundle listings add FSC-certified paper and board and a full-size poster of the finished image with every puzzle. Those are the company’s own descriptions.

The brand was already selling outside the UK by 2021. On 30 June 2021, the board-game blog The Opinionated Gamers published a review of a Cloudberries puzzle called Space, noting that the company had approached the site and describing it as a UK company making traditional jigsaw puzzles with plenty of art choices.

A note on the name: the cloudberry is a northern fruit, and other unrelated businesses use the word. This guide is about the UK jigsaw puzzle brand at cloudberries.co.uk.

Illustrators, ranges and cuts.

The Cloudberries catalogue is built around commissioned artwork. Its product pages credit illustrators by name and often by home city or country, and many designs are described as created especially for Cloudberries. The illustrator Romain Trystram drew two neon cityscapes, Tokyo and Skyline; the Brighton-based illustrator Lucy Sherston designed Landscapes; and the Argentinian artist Laura Garcia Serventi painted the plant-filled Backyard. Other pages credit artists from Japan, Malaysia, France, the United States and Switzerland, and the brand calls these projects collaborations. The British illustrator Eleanor Taylor is credited with Desert, a wraparound oasis design.

The website sorts the puzzles into named ranges. Small Batch by Cloudberries® is described as produced in limited runs; Poster Puzzles® and Newbie Puzzles® sit alongside it, together with special editions. The shop can also be browsed by theme — abstract, colourful, gradient, flowers, food, nature, space and others — and by cut, with separate shelves for ribbon cut and random cut pieces. A gradient series of rainbow puzzles is one of the recurring formats, and some designs, such as Celestial and Entomology, are built from restored vintage illustrations — a star chart in one case and rows of butterflies and moths in the other.

Shape is part of the play. The company sells banana- and sausage-shaped puzzles by the Swiss artist Daniel Peter that, by its description, have no straight edges and no corners. Seasonal products have become a large part of the range: jigsaw advent calendars in which each numbered box holds one section of a larger puzzle, glow-in-the-dark designs, a Halloween countdown calendar and Christmas box sets of mini puzzles. Beyond jigsaws, the site sells a vase product under the name Vasecado®, along with accessories, gift cards and subscriptions.

Design and documentation.

Jigsaw puzzle makers range widely in how they are built. Some are long-established family firms with their own presses and cutting lines; others are small studios that commission artwork, design the box and work with a specialist manufacturer to print and cut the pieces. Some names belong to larger groups that run several puzzle brands side by side, each aimed at a different shelf or a different kind of puzzler.

Because so much of a puzzle’s look comes from the picture on the lid, a maker’s identity often lives in its choices rather than in a single mark: which illustrators it works with, how it names its ranges, how its boxes are laid out and how the pieces are cut. The same picture can feel quite different depending on the board, the finish and the shape of the cut.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started it, who owns it now, where its puzzles are designed and made, and how its ranges and packaging have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A brand voice as bright as the boxes.

Much of the Cloudberries identity is carried by its writing. Product descriptions are full of puns and asides — a stationery puzzle is pitched at people who collect washi tape, a sushi design is called “a matcha made in heaven”, and the banana-shaped jigsaw asks whether the company has gone bananas. The same tone runs through the navigation, where a missing page is headed “That piece is missing.”

The website shows a business that sells directly and through retailers. The shop is offered in English and German, with a long list of countries and regions to choose from, and a “Sell our puzzles” section points shops to wholesale ordering through the Faire marketplace. The company says its puzzles are sold in bookstores, galleries and museums around the world.

Where the puzzles are printed and cut is not set out on the brand’s own pages, which describe some designs as created in the UK and the Small Batch range as made in limited runs.

For a design guide, Cloudberries shows how a small puzzle brand can build its look from commissioned illustration, named ranges and a playful voice — compare Wentworth, the wooden-puzzle maker from Wiltshire, and Liberty Puzzles. For this guide we use berry violet, sunrise amber and gradient pink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Cloudberries’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.