PRH Children's Ronnie Fairweather to retire after 30 years

Ronnie Fairweather, creative director at Penguin Random House Children’s, is retiring after nearly 30 years with the publisher. Her last day will be 31st May.

Fairweather joined Penguin in 1987 as children's art director and was responsible for all books published under the Hamish Hamilton, Warne, Puffin and Viking Kestrel imprints. In her time with the company, she art-directed hundreds of covers and contributed to the design and creative treatment of numerous books.

In her role as creative director from 2007, Fairweather worked across the Penguin Ventures business on a variety of high-profile projects including executive producing the Peter Rabbit animation for the BBC, which was co-created by Penguin, the BBC and Nickelodeon and for which she won an EMMY Award. She also worked on a Ladybird collection for Liberty's, and most recently worked closely with Rowland White in Michael Joseph on the design of the Ladybird for Grown-Ups and the Ladybird Expert series.  

Francesca Dow, m.d. at Penguin Children’s, said: “I'd like to thank Ronnie for her extraordinary support and contribution to our children's business over the past 30 years.  Ronnie is part of our creative backbone and this together with her invaluable knowledge of the heritage of our brands has resulted in the success of many recent projects for Penguin Children’s. We will all miss her unique wit and character. We wish Ronnie much happiness in the future.”

Fairweather said: “Penguin has been an incredible rollercoaster of a ride and I have had amazing opportunities, met some extraordinary people and made great friends. The last couple of years have been full of new ideas and projects and I feel that I am leaving on a real high – the best way to go.  Leaving Penguin is really just the end of a chapter for me  – not the end of the book.”

PRH has not yet announced Fairweather's replacement.