Dorling Kindersley
Type
Founded	1974
Headquarters	London, England, UK
Key people	Christopher Dorling,Peter Kindersley
Parent	Penguin Group, part of Pearson PLC
Website	www.dk.com

Dorling Kindersley (DK) is an international publishing company specialising in illustrated reference books for adults and children in 51 languages. Year 1974 ( MCMLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Peter Kindersley (born 1941 was the co-founder of the publishing company Dorling Kindersley and ran it with Christopher Dorling from 1974 until he sold A holding company is a company that owns part all or a majority of other companies' outstanding Stock. Penguin Group is the second largest trade book Publisher in the world behind Random House. Pearson plc () is a London -based media conglomerate. It is the largest book Publisher in the UK, India, Australia A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of Literature or Information &ndash the activity of making information available for public view A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together

History

DK was founded as a book-packaging company by Christopher Dorling and Peter Kindersley in London in 1974, and in 1982 moved into publishing. Peter Kindersley (born 1941 was the co-founder of the publishing company Dorling Kindersley and ran it with Christopher Dorling from 1974 until he sold London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Year 1974 ( MCMLXXIV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the 1974 Gregorian calendar. Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) The first book published under the DK name was a First Aid Manual for the British voluntary medical services; this book established the company's distinctive visual style of copiously illustrated text on a glossy white background. DK Inc. began publishing in the United States in 1991. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Year 1991 ( MCMXCI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar.

In 1999 DK printed 13 million copies of a book but only sold 3 million of them, leaving the company with crippling debt. Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) As a direct result, DK was taken over the following year by the Pearson PLC media company, and made part of Penguin Group, which also owns the Penguin Books label. Pearson plc () is a London -based media conglomerate. It is the largest book Publisher in the UK, India, Australia Penguin Group is the second largest trade book Publisher in the world behind Random House. Penguin Books is a British Publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane.

Publications

DK publishes an extensive range of titles internationally for adults and children. Most of the company's books are produced by teams of editors and designers who work with freelance writers and illustrators. Some are endorsed by "imprimaturs": well-known and respected organizations such as the British Medical Association, the Royal Horticultural Society, and the British Red Cross. History The BMA founded in 1832 by Charles Hastings was originally known as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association (PMSA the first meeting of which was held in the boardroom The Royal Horticultural Society ( RHS) was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present The British Red Cross Society is a prominent part of the largest impartial Humanitarian organisation in the world – the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement Many DK books apparently produced by celebrity authors such as Carol Vorderman are actually ghostwritten by the company's own writers and editors. Carol Jean Vorderman MBE (born 24 December 1960 is a British Television personality best known for being a long-standing co-presenter of Channel

Popular titles that DK has published include The Way The Universe Works, The Way Science Works, and a series of large-format "visual guides" with such titles as Universe, Earth, Animal, Human, and History. Other successful book series published in the 1990's included Eyewitness and DK Superguides. Eyewitness Books is a series of Nonfiction books intended for young adults DK Superguides is a series of children's sport books published by Dorling Kindersley in 1998.

Dorling Kindersley's London office is at Shell Mex House, 80 Strand, a 1930s Art Deco building easily recognizable from the River Thames by its distinctive clock. Shell Mex House is at 80 Strand London, UK Broadly speaking in an Art Deco style it was designed by Ernest Joseph, a Jewish architect who was a leading Art Deco was a popular international design movement from 1925 until 1939 affecting the decorative arts such as Architecture, Interior design, and Industrial

During the 1990s, the company also published educational videos and a successful range of educational CD-ROMs under the brand "DK Multimedia", during the late 1990s CD-ROMs were rebranded as "DK Interactive Learning" to reflect a changed emphasis toward the educational sector. Video is the technology of electronically capturing, Recording, processing storing transmitting and reconstructing a sequence of Still images CD-ROM (an initialism of "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory " is a pre-pressed Compact Disc that contains data accessible to but not writable The programs were written in C++ using a cross-platform software framework known internally as Penge (named after the South London suburb) and ran on Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh. The media data and scripts were compressed using a process called scrunging. The content screens were laid out on Macintosh using Quark XPress under System 7 (later OS8), and authored using a custom-created Xtension named 'XTauthor' through which the screens could be exported as 24bit PICT files (for subsequent palette optimisation into 8 bit DIB, GIFf or PNG format), and the authoring as an associated 'PAGE' file with . pag extension. The open architecture of the products prior to the scrunge procedure enabled relatively straightforward localisation for foreign publishers.

Following dwindling sales and increasing competition from websites, the company tried to rebrand the digital part of its business as "DK Online" before opting to sell it to an entirely separate company, Global Software Publishing (GSP), in 2000. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages Most of the remaining CD-ROM staff were made redundant during the acquisition of the company by Pearson PLC.

See also

• UK children's book publishers

External links

• Dorling Kindersley website