When the publishing house was founded in 1984, publishers Dorothea Löcker and Alexander Potyka decided not to limit their publishing programme to a single focus or niche. An architecture title and four children's books in the first programme already hinted at the diversity that has characterised Picus Verlag to this day. Now, the logo of the pounding woodpecker can be found on books for children as well as fiction, travelogues, contemporary history, memoirs and essays. The wide-ranging programme is united by an educational impetus, cosmopolitanism, the idea of crossing boundaries and intellectual engagement, but also a sense of aesthetics and joie de vivre.