The first book came with something to throw.

Klutz began with a single how-to book and a bag of beanbags. English Wikipedia describes Klutz as a publishing company founded in 1977 in Palo Alto, California, and says its first book, Juggling for the Complete Klutz, came with juggling beanbags in a mesh bag. Wikipedia says the book was written by three Stanford University classmates: Darrell Lorentzen, John Cassidy and B.C. Rimbeaux.

A 2007 profile in Publishers Weekly, written by Bridget Kinsella, tells the same founding story from the inside. It describes the three as Stanford friends, says Cassidy co-founded the company “as a way of having fun at making a living,” and says the juggling book was packaged with three bean bags. The magazine reports that the book kept selling well beyond the short run its authors had expected, which turned a one-off project into a publishing house. The same article places the book’s arrival around the time of the Pet Rock craze, and says sales picked up once the book distributor Ingram took it on.

That first book set the pattern for everything after it. Wikipedia says Klutz concentrates on activity-driven books that are sold together with the items needed for the activity, and that many of them are spiral bound and teach crafts. Publishers Weekly put it more plainly in 2007: Klutz products, it said, “are not flat books.” A Klutz title is, in other words, a book and a kit at once, with the instructions bound in and the materials attached.

Knots, magic, string art and solar cars.

The list grew outwards from juggling into almost any activity that can be taught on a page. Wikipedia’s selection of Klutz publications groups them into crafts, fashion, science, how-to and other categories. Among the crafts and fashion titles it names String Art, Twirly Q’s, Bead Loom Bracelets and Paper Fashions; among the science titles it lists Air Power and The Solar Car Book; and among the how-to books it lists The Klutz Book of Knots alongside the original juggling book. Other titles it records include The Klutz Book of Magic, Kids Cooking, The Klutz Book of Card Games, dated 1990, and The Book of Classic Board Games, dated 1991.

Not every Klutz book teaches a hands-on skill. Wikipedia mentions a geography title that includes packets of rice matching the average daily calorie intake of the world’s poorest people, an example of the company using a physical object to make a point rather than to build something. Wikipedia also records the company’s credo, “Create wonderful things, be good, have fun,” and says Klutz books carry a “100% Klutz Certified” emblem. Wikipedia’s list also has a category of books sold with unique toys, with The Foxtail Book as one example, and a fashion group that sits next to the crafts.

The way the books are made is part of the brand. Publishers Weekly quoted the view inside the company that designers have as much say about a book as editors, and described departments that worked closely together on each title. The same article said Klutz had moved into a former Coca-Cola bottling plant in Palo Alto, and that it had run its own warehouse in Santa Clara before handing distribution to Scholastic. It also reported that, roughly a decade after the founding, Cassidy’s partners left and he took over the day-to-day running of the company, later serving as its publisher.

Design and documentation.

Craft and science-kit brands sit at an unusual point in the toy trade. A single box may hold paper, paint and glue, or wires, magnets and a set of printed instructions, and the brand on the lid often belongs to a company that also makes books, art supplies or other toys, or that has been bought by a larger publisher or toy group along the way.

Because so much of the product is the instructions, a kit brand’s identity tends to live in its packaging, its project books and the way its parts fit together, rather than in a single object. The same name can appear in a toy shop, a bookshop, a museum shop and a classroom, and the company behind it may have changed hands or moved where its kits are made and packed.

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

From Nelvana to Scholastic in two years.

Klutz stayed independent for more than two decades and then changed hands twice in quick succession. English Wikipedia says the Canadian animation company Nelvana acquired Klutz in April 2000, citing a press release dated 12 April 2000. Publishers Weekly reported in 2007 that Nelvana was itself later acquired by Corus Entertainment, which placed Klutz inside a Canadian media group.

The next owner was a children’s publisher. Wikipedia says Klutz became a subsidiary of Scholastic Inc. in 2002, and the 2007 Publishers Weekly profile also dates Scholastic’s purchase to 2002. The same profile describes Klutz piloting a product called Build-a-Book at Scholastic book fairs, one way the new parent put the activity books in front of its own audience, and says distribution passed from Klutz’s own warehouse to Scholastic. Writing five years after the sale, Publishers Weekly still described John Cassidy as the company’s publisher, and said Klutz remained in Palo Alto.

Through those changes the format held steady: a spiral-bound book, a set of materials and a cheerful tone, published under a name that pokes fun at its own readers. Klutz sits alongside other brands built on making things by hand, such as the art-materials maker Faber-Castell, which owns Creativity for Kids.

For a design guide, Klutz shows how a publisher can turn the book itself into the product, with materials, binding and a self-mocking name doing the work a mascot might do elsewhere. Compare a crayon brand built around a single hands-on product in our Crayola brand guidelines and a fellow craft-kit maker in our Creativity for Kids brand guidelines. For this guide we use juggling red, beanbag yellow and spiral blue with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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