Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your week has gone well and that you have gotten done what you needed & wanted to before diving into the weekend. I’m amazed we are more than one week into March already and the spring quarter at my university will begin soon, which means a lot more teaching and a lot less time for design for me in the upcoming months. But I can’t complain. There’s always pockets of time for designing, even in the busiest of quarters. Today I want to share some examples and inspiration, mostly to do with type and how quiet inspires so much of what I design and do. I hope it will inspire you, too.

So first, the case for quiet or why you need less noise for work and your health. A short read that has a lot of links to other studies and reports and contains lots of good information. I’m not someone who needs to be sold on the value of quiet and silence, but maybe you know someone at your library who does. Share this with them. Your creativity and productivity will thank you.

I’ve always been one for working in silence. I can’t handle music playing when I write or even really when I’m drawing, binding books, or laying out a new project on the screen. If I try to listen to anything else, I become distracted and I’m not nearly as productive or creative as I am in silence.

And, while it is almost impossible to come by silence in an urban environment, we can get quiet and one of the best ways of achieving quiet and inspiration is to get outside for a walk. In my neighborhood, the Japanese tea garden is always one of the places I find inspiring and peaceful.

Getting outside and enjoying some fresh air & sunshine always inspires some new work, usually with a nature theme.

But perhaps you are more inspired when you are surrounded by books. If that’s the case, then The Well-Appointed Desk’s Fashionable Friday: Bibliophile Edition has you covered.

So many lovely things. But what does this have to do with typography? Quiet isn’t just about audio noise, but visual noise, too. Too much clutter visually makes it harder for us to pay attention to the signal as we have to parse through so much noise. Thinking about quiet in design can create more thoughtful, restful, and powerful graphic design for our libraries than simply throwing everything we can think of on the page.

This is brought home with two very different examples of marketing and typography that I’ve seen on my recent walks around campus and the city.

The first example is of what un-quiet typography looks like and is found all over the campus right now as we prepare for going to semesters, which is an entirely different design challenge.

This person who designed this sign had such good intentions, but went astray when it came to the typography.

As noted in a previous post on setting type to run vertically, don’t set it so people read from bottom to top. This is unnatural. I have no idea why this keeps happening on signs around campus, but I really, really wish it would stop.

While the colors used are our official colors, the typeface isn’t. It’s not even close and the university just put out a new branding book with explicit typefaces that should be used. The largest text looks like it was set with Tekton Pro, or something similar. While very friendly, it is not in the brand book.

Also, there is nothing quiet or restful about this sign. I know it is made to grab attention, but where do you start reading? What’s most important? Why is it this shape? Why can’t I read the URL easily? There’s so many questions about how this was designed (and how it got approved when it is in conflict with the branding guidelines). But this does show what not to do with your library signs.

Bright, warm colors, like red, are great at capturing attention, but you need to make sure that your signs are always easy to read. So don’t set type reading the wrong direction and make sure whatever form your sign will take that it is appropriate for the venue and context.

Unlike the signs on campus, I saw this sign while waiting for the SF Center for the Book to open last weekend for a workshop.

It is the opposite of the other sign. It is eye-catching, in a good way, while still managing to be quiet and restful visually. The orange text stands out, is easy-to-read and bold. Nothing is aligned to center just because someone couldn’t think of anything else to do.

The images are clear, aligned beautiful and provide the context and historical connections between SF Center for the Book and their mission: teaching the art of the book through their many workshops, classes, and exhibits. This is great sign design. Strive for this in your library’s signs and visual communications.

Quiet doesn’t mean boring design. It means deliberate and thoughtful. It means taking your time to determine what is essential to convey rather than yelling everything you can think of to get attention. How can you use the concept of quiet in your next design project at your library?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, full of time to create and to relax. I’ll be back next week with more news and notes. Allons-y!

 

Happy Friday, dear readers! My goodness we are almost to the end of another month. Has it been a good month for you? Have you created and shared something new with the world? I hope your month is going well and you are maintaining your inspiration for your work and your play. I hope you are also using your voice as a librarian to make people welcome in your library, your design work can help with this, too. Today, I want to share some things that have helped me in the last few weeks get inspired and get moved to action. Hopefully they help you, too.

Let’s face it, it’s been a hard year, a chaotic year in many ways already. And, sometimes you really do need to decompress in order to continue to engage. I highly recommend this article on 10 ways to escape reality and relax. I’m so thankful we are getting some sunshine here in California that I can walk outside and listen to the birds. They remind me it’s almost spring and that nature can be so inspiring.

I finally got two Chuck Wendig books from my local public library and can’t wait to dive into them, but I’ve been enjoying his blog for quite sometime. His advice for writers can go for anyone who needs some motivation for continuing to work in times of trial. Check out his post, Why Persist as a Writer (NSFW, if you have someone reading over your shoulder).

For design work, we can always use inspiration. I think of my brain as a Rolodex a lot of the time, filing a way bits of inspiration to use at some later date. And one of the things that always inspires me is great typography. So check out this set of gorgeous free fonts, courtesy of Smashing Magazine. Who knows? You might find just the one for your next project.

And, because it is still winter, check out Colorful Inspiration for Gray Days, also from Smashing Magazine. We could use all the help we can get and this is a great dose of inspiration for projects both inside and outside the library.

Finally, check out these color and culture quizzes from HOW Magazine to dip your toe into vast ocean of interesting associations we have with colors depending on our culture. Gives you something to think about the next time you are creating a design and picking out a color palette.

I hope you have a lovely weekend filled with joy and time to relax, to create, and to do something wonderful. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Friday, dear readers! Can you believe we are to the end of another week? I can’t. This month is going by too quickly, in a deluge of rain here in the Bay Area. But at least there is always good (and bad) design to talk about in the libraries. Today I want to share some inspiration and a few considerations about typeface choice when deciding on branding guidelines–applicable to libraries and just about any organization.

First the fun. As always, Smashing Magazine has provided a heap of inspiration in their, Breaking out of the box: January 2017 edition of design eye-candy. Love all the illustrations and color palette ideas from these gorgeous images. Makes me want to throw out all the editing work I have to do today and just start sketching.

The new year brings with it a breath of fresh air and kick in the pants to start movement on new projects, doesn’t it? Something that I see a lot of libraries and other organizations doing is thinking and working towards refreshing their visual brands. This isn’t inherently either a good or bad thing, and often it is necessary. You don’t want a website that looks like it is stuck in the 20th century any more than you want to be wearing the same clothes you did in high school. Times and fashions change. And yet, when trying to brand something we need to think of the future, the past, and how we can create timeless brands that whether the trends but aren’t defined by them.

All of this gets me to choosing typefaces for any branding activity–and really any graphic design activity though it is especially important for branding. If you are creating a branding and style guide that you actually want people to adhere to in your library, for goodness sake pick typefaces that people actually have access to! This seems simple right? Of course. If you want someone to actually use your guidelines, you’ve got to make it easy for them–seamless experience and all that. And yet, too many times I see organizations pick a typeface–or two!–that no one can use unless they pay hundreds of dollars. That is quite a large barrier, especially for a library or a department with a small budget.

However, if you choose typefaces that come pre-loaded with the design software your organization uses or even pre-loaded in office productivity suites, then no one has the excuse not to use the defined typefaces and you might get more compliance. Does this limit you some in your typographical design choices? Yes, but it is a better way of ensuring consistency than specifying a typeface no one has and then getting mad that no one is following your guidelines.

But wait, you may say, I’ll just design everything then it will all adhere to the guidelines no matter what typeface I choose. Really? You’re going to design absolutely everything for your library or organization? This may happen in a large org, with lots of design staff, but even at my university we don’t have a large enough design staff to produce absolutely everything that is every made on campus. I’m not talking about every promotional brochure that goes out to potential donors–I’m talking about everything. Every handout, flyer, button, mug, brochure, change in hours sign, everything. Do you have time to do that for your library? Probably not unless you were solely hired as the library’s graphic designer. I know I don’t have time to do all of that and library graphic design is my passion–but I was hired to teach and do reference and buy books, etc.

Also, is it really sustainable to say that you’ll hoard all control over the graphic design at your library through using a typeface that no one else can use? Maybe you bought a great typeface on a flash sale–goodness knows I have–and you want to use it. That’s great, but don’t make it the standard for your branding. Think long term. You won’t be at your library forever and you need to share guidelines if they are to work–the whole point is to have some standards for designs. And typefaces are so important to branding that it behooves you and benefits your library to create guidelines that people can follow.

So, all I’m asking is that when you are working on your redesigns in the new year, pick typefaces that are available and accessible to everyone who will be designing at your library. Your colleagues and your inner graphic designer will thank you.

I hope you have a lovely weekend–I’m hoping for a break in the rain to do some walking–and have time to create something lovely. I’ll be back soon with some more news and notes. Allons-y!

Happy Friday, dear readers! Can you believe we are in December? I certainly can’t. November, well, November has been a bit more of a wild ride than I was expecting and I’ve been busy with lots of design projects so there hasn’t been as much posting here as I was hoping. But here’s hoping the last month of the year provides some good fodder for the design posts. Today, I’m sharing some design inspiration and fun that will hopefully help inspire you as you race towards the holiday finish line of the year.

I know we are already a day into December, but if you need a refresh for your wallpaper, check out the lovely December desktop wallpaper designs over at Smashing Magazine. I’m rather fond of the little penguin in the Santa hat. Adorable!

I’m rather fond of gift-giving and of all things related to stationery, so The Well-Appointed Desk’s Holiday Buying Guide is like a catalog to a candy store for me. Now if only everyone on my gifting list felt the same…

Brush lettering is absolutely everywhere it seems and on everything. If you want to learn more and perhaps practice it yourself, this article from Smashing Magazine is a good place to start.

Finally, I had to share this blog post from The Blabbermouth Blog because it sums up a lot of my feelings at the moment, especially in regards to incorporating important things other than design and libraries on my blog. But I do believe that libraries are still important, so important, and that creating great graphic design for libraries is not a trivial matter–it can help us communicate and welcome everyone into our spaces, programs, and events. So I’ll continue writing and sharing here and in my other work as a librarian.

Finally, I didn’t forget about looking for autumnal inspiration for our work and our designs. We went to Japan (lots of inspiration for design, which I’ll be sharing at later dates) at the end of October and the leaves were just changing so this photo is from Kyoto. The maple leaves changing colors has inspired my work this fall and I look forward to seeing what inspiration I can glean from the coming winter as it brings its changes to the landscape around me.

I hope you have a lovely weekend full of good reads, good design, and good relaxation. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!