Friday Design: Blind Date with a Book

Happy Friday and Happy February, dear readers! I hope the month is treating you well so far. It is amazing that we are already into the second month of 2018. So let’s have some fun today with blind date with a book!

February brings Valentine’s Day and lots of interesting and fun book display and event tie-ins at libraries. I really love the programming that public librarians produce and love that academic libraries are picking up on some of their fun. My local public library ran a blind date with a book event last year and I really wanted to do one this year as I was recently given collection development duties for our popular reading collection.

If you haven’t heard about blind date with a book before, check out this great post of tips and tricks from the Ontarian Librarian.

Happily, our Access Services Manager was completely cool with the event after we decided to write barcodes on the back of the wrapped books to make check-out easy and Technical Services was kind enough to change some temporary location codes so we could keep track of the titles pulled for the event. Another librarian colleague helped write up some blurbs and then the fun began!

It looked like arts and crafts time at a kindergarten class in my office this week with all the wrapping and lots of writing blurbs. It is a great excuse to practice different lettering styles. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the decoration of the books, I stuck with simply writing our blurbs on the books, but changed up the writing style. We’re also hoping to get students to give us some feedback after they read their book.

And, one of the best parts, for space cramped libraries is that the entire display fits on one book cart (if you’re willing to refill as needed). I’m pretty happy with how it looks and hope our students get a kick out of going on a blind date with a book. I’ll let you know how it went after the event is over.

photograph of book cart with books wrapped for blind date with a book

So just remember, while designing for your library can be serious business, you should have some fun, too.

Also, since it is the beginning of the month, it means time to change up your desktop wallpaper. Check out this month’s fun designs from Smashing Magazine.

Finally, not to be a broken record, but I’m speaking at ALA Midwinter in the ALA Store. It’s the first time ALA is having author’s give book talks in the store. Come see me and stay for the other talks, too. List of all the talks is here with links to the conference scheduler, too.

I’m talking at 11:30 am on Saturday, so stop by to see me talk about graphic design without using a projector! It will be fun, interactive, and you’ll get a nifty handout I designed. Plus, you can buy my book at the ALA store and I can sign it (you know, if you’re into that. If not, that’s cool, too.).

I hope you’ll stop by as I’m super-excited to share some time with you and talk graphic design in libraries.

So that’s it for today. I hope you have a lovely, relaxing, and rejuvenating weekend. I’ll be back soon with thoughts and notes. Allons-y!