The CANADIAN DESIGN RESOURCE

Jack and Carl Cole, orphaned brothers from Detroit, opened their first Coles Books store near the University of Toronto in the mid 1930s. A decade later the first Coles Notes was published. As the story goes, a number of local high school students were having difficulties translating a french text, so the Cole brothers hired a translator and published the results. After selling nearly a thousand copies within a matter of days, Coles Notes was born.

Since the 1940s more than 80,000,000 copies of Coles Notes have been sold on five different continents. Each copy features the instantly recognizable black and yellow striped background with either a green or red foreground (except for the special Shakespeare editions which feature red and black stripes only). As an interesting sidebar: Coles Notes predates CliffsNotes (the American equivalent) by a decade. For a time, CliffsNotes were simply Coles Notes with different covers; that is until Jack Cole’s heirs denied CliffNotes Inc. the rights to use Coles Notes content without using the classic Coles Notes covers. CliffsNotes refused, and began publishing their own content.

Designer
George French
Client
Coles Bookstore
Year
1948
Categories
Graphics / Print

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5 comments — Leave a Comment

Bruce Cole November 17th 2007
I am the son of Carl Cole, one of the Cole brothers. Cliffs notes payed a royalty to Coles for the use of Coles Notes. It was Jack Cole who was friends with Cliff. They met during World War II, and that is how Cliffs Notes started. The design of the covers was done by a gentleman by the name of George French. I hope this helps you and if you need any more information please contact me.
Rick Chambers July 28th 2008
I have a booklet entitled “Notes on Lorna Doone” shown with “Cole’s” Toronto, Ontario, 370 Bloor St.W. and 726 Yonge St.

There is no date shown and it is ornage with black stripes. Is this an edition form the Cole brothers?
Goal Setting & Winning | Lady Luck March 30th 2009
[…] The Success Principles. I just finished chapter 7, Unleash the Power of Goal-Setting. The Cole’s Notes version of the chapter is: all your goals should be measurable; how much, by when. I realized […]
Madeline Morgan July 8th 2010
Goal setting is very important specially if you want to plan long term.:”,
Arianna Torres July 20th 2010
Goal setting is very important if you want something to be done in a short period of time.`~-

Categories Years

Coles Notes

5 comments — Leave a Comment