Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you’ve had a lovely week and have a wonderful weekend planned. For today’s Friday Design Talk, I want to talk about redesigns, specifically in the context of soup cans. But it applies to libraries, especially with regards to logo redesigns, rebranding efforts, and web redesigns. So let’s talk soup!

I was recently in a store shopping with my husband when we noticed that Progresso has redesigned their soup can labels. I took two photos, which you can see below, of the redesigned labels on the left and the older design on the right. So what do you notice? What speaks to you? What works and doesn’t work for your design sensibilities? I’ll wait a bit while you check out the cans and think about it. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you my thoughts below the photos.

Okay, are we ready to talk redesign and rebranding? Yes? Great!

So, first things first, there really isn’t anything terribly wrong with the redesigned soup labels and the rebranded Progresso banner. But there really, in my opinion isn’t anything great either. It is all quite bland, which I’m almost positive wasn’t what anyone wants people to think of when they think of their soup line. You want soup to be delicious, aromatic, comforting, yummy, right? I just don’t get that feeling from the new design.

So what is in the new design and what’s been changed?

The serif fonts used in the old label have been swapped out for a plain san serif font. Okay, one could make the argument that this makes the label easier to read. It also makes it look like every other redesigned packaging and sign I’ve seen over the last few years. It seems like a large chunk of the design world has been swept up in the Helvetica trend and san serifs are the only go-to fonts used anymore. I have nothing against a good san serif, but I never get the feeling that it is either “traditional” like the label says nor do I feel like it makes me think “yum, soup”.

The new label is less busy. There are no pops of color from the vegetables on top of the Progresso banner (which I seriously thought was part of their logo, but apparently isn’t). There is no depth to the label–most of the gradients have been removed, giving the new banner a flat look, even with the bit of movement with the swoop of the banner from left to right.

The use of just the bowl of soup as the focal image, instead of a close-up with the spoon is an interesting choice. Even with the removal of the center square with the name of the soup from the old labels, it feels like the label now has an odder delineation of space. It almost looks like the can is frowning with how the bottom of the label cuts off the soup bowl, but that could just be me.

The new labels just feel bland, like they don’t want to stand out from the crowd, they just want to sit on the shelf with every other soup can and be quiet. That’s not what you want when you are competing for market share in soup. You want to be bold–to connect–to be different. Stand out. It’s okay. At least they kept the blue, although it is much lighter overall, so I can find it in the soup aisle.

So what does this have to do with libraries? If you are contemplating a redesign or a design of a label, a logo, or really anything for your library, don’t be bland. Be bold. You don’t have to follow every hot new design trend. You don’t have to set everything in san serif fonts and you don’t have to make everything completely flat in your design. Pops of color can be good and eye-catching. In design, as in life and libraries, sometimes you have to standout and be brave. Don’t always go with the safe choice, just because it is there. Pick fonts and colors and designs and graphics that truly connect with your message and evoke the emotions that you want to evoke with your designs.

And, if you are designing for soup packaging, make sure its label screams yum and comfort (it doesn’t have to actually say those words, but the design should). Think about what your design needs to communicate first, always–then go from there.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend full of fun and relaxation as we head into autumn. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

 

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your day is going well and you have a fabulous weekend planned. Today I wanted to share a few resources for determining color palettes for your designs, along with some other design goodies that will hopefully inspire you to tackle your next library design project.

After choosing fonts, I think I’ve gotten the most questions about color when I talk about graphic design for librarians. Everyone wants to know how to choose the correct colors for their work, which is great! We should all think about colors and how they affect the messages we are communicating. Plus, playing with colors is just fun, kind of like playing with finger paints. Of course, we always need to think about accessibility when we are choosing colors–since the whole point is to communicate, it doesn’t serve us well to have information conveyed only through color or with such low contrast (think yellow text on a white background) that some people can’t read it. After we’ve considered accessibility though, there is an endless spectrum of colors to consider. So how do you choose?

As graphic designers know, if you want to have a coherent color palette you need to sample colors from whatever image you are using in your design. This is easy in programs like Photoshop. If you don’t (or can’t) use Photoshop, you can always upload your image to Color Palette FX and get an automatically generated color palette. Using colors that are drawn from an image you are already using in your flyer or poster or whatever you are designing will make everything look coherent. The people who are looking at your design probably won’t consciously think about this, but they’ll know it looks good to them. If you more help in choosing colors without learning a lot of color theory, check out Smashing Magazine’s article, “A Simple Web Developer’s Guide to Color.” It should get you started and hopefully alleviate any fears you may have about choosing colors.

And while you are looking for colors to use, check out a couple of free icon sets for potential color palettes: Summer Icon Set (super relaxing) and Space Icon Set (intergalactic!).

Also, just for fun, check out these people who are building castle in France with medieval technology. It’s definitely impressive.

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

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has been wonderful and you are ready to make the last weekend in June a great one. Today I want to share one design imperative: clarity matters! Design should be intuitive and graphic design should communicate. Sometimes, it can be a matter of safety as we can see in the example I’m sharing today.

So there is a ton of construction at my library this summer, some of which necessitates using different emergency routes because our main entrance is blocked by construction. Now before we get into the part about clarity in one part of the design I want to make something else clear:

All the rest of the signage in the library for the emergency exits and routes to the emergency exits is clear, as you can see from the signage that is in the first picture near the top of the door. It uses a large, san serif type and tells everyone clearly where the emergency exit is.

So, with that out of the way, I’ll give you three guesses about what I was upset about with the signage in this first photo (and the first two guesses don’t count).

Yes, of course I was upset about the blue arrow with the scribbled writing that says “stairs down”! This was awful and it is for the emergency exit!

Now, you can say that the “stairs down” is clearly marked in the first sign, which it is, but a visual cue is useful, too. And, if we are going to do visual signage, we better darn well do it well for emergency signage.

So, what to do?

This second photograph shows you exactly what I did to correct this problem, which was super easy and should have been done in the first place.

First, make the arrow red to match the rest of the emergency signage. If you see color, red primes us for danger and emergency. All other signs use the red and black color scheme, so this one should, too.

Second, type the words “stairs down”, in large, san-serif font so someone can actually read it! You don’t want confusion in case of emergency. Make it clear; make it big; make it centered like the other signs.

Third, replace the sign.

Easy, simple design fix for clarity when it matters.

So, what can you apply from this to your own signage designs for your library?

Make your signs clear.

Make your signs consistent.

Someday, someone’s safety might depend on it.

That’s it for the design short today. Of course we could go into how we could improve the other sign on the door, too, but that is something for another day.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, full of fun and relaxation. I’m going to the county fair so maybe I’ll find something design-related to bring back to apply to the library and to share for next time.

I’ll be back soon with more news and notes. Allons-y!

 

Happy Friday, dear readers! I feel like we could use a week of Fridays about now, but since we only get one I hope yours is a great one. Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to share a redesign I’ve been working on as promised. So keep reading for an example of how I put some of the design stuff I’ve been sharing into practice for my work.

So, disclaimer time: even though I love graphic design and do research in it, I’m not responsible for the advertisements the library runs in our student paper nor am I on the library’s UX committee. I redesigned the following ad simply because I couldn’t help myself, though it would be great if we did run a redesigned ad the next quarter.

Now that the disclaimer is through, let’s look at the current ad, which is below:

Now, there is nothing that is overly horrible about this ad. It is clear, has a lot of white space, doesn’t use any fonts that make your eyes want to twitch and, if you take the time to read it, gives you all the information you need about the library’s extended study hours.

So why redesign it?

Two main reasons: 1) because almost any design can be made better and 2) to make it easier to scan for information and therefore more likely to be used.

So how did I start the redesign?

With planning and brainstorming of course. The ad space runs in a 5 by 8 inch space, so I knew my space parameters, which always helps for planning. I also knew what information I needed to include from what is run in the ad and I knew what I didn’t want to keep. So below you can see a photo of my brainstorming page with what I wanted to keep.

You can see that I also drew a thumbnail, along with some notes, for a redesign idea (plus a note for another idea on how to redesign the ad, specifically around the tricky issue of the dates and times).

Notice I didn’t copy everything from the original ad. All the basic, necessary information is there, but not the questions and headers. I wanted to simply the ad so I could use bigger, bolder fonts to be eye catching.

One element that I wanted to expand from the original though was the dates and times of the extended hours. I wanted students to be able to tell, at a glance, when the library would be open for all the dates of the final weeks of the term. The original way, while taking up less space than what I envisioned, seemed to be more difficult to scan.

The photo, as noted above, is pixelated–not a lot, but enough to be annoying. But more importantly, it doesn’t really add anything to the ad. It just takes up a lot of space and is awkward with the other box of quasi-calendar hours. It had to go.

In place of the photo, I already knew I wanted to use some free icons from the Dashel Icon Set because of their relationship to the information in the ad and because of their simplicity. They reproduce wonderfully in newsprint (I’ve used them in another library ad I was able to design) and don’t create any visual boxes in the ad that make for awkward layout.

I decided on a centered alignment, even though this can be seen as formal, because I wanted to use a movie credit style layout for all the hours (I had 2 weeks worth to work with) and to keep a rather lot of information calm on the eyes.

Below you can see my first redesign with all the dates and hours displayed.

I used just 2 San Serif fonts from the same family for this redesign, but due to the differing weights and use of all caps for the headlines, it still gives a lot of visual interest.

All elements are center aligned and the days of the weeks, dates, and times are easy to find at a glance.

The extra information about the “Spring out of Stress” events are still at the bottom of the ad, but look unified. Using the same alignment as the extended hours, it is easy to see when the events will happen and what will happen during the events. Everything looks like it goes together.

I added just three icons to this ad that work with what happens during extended hours–lots of coffee drinking, lots of note taking and writing, and lots of conversations. Using three keeps the eye moving as odd groupings help keep visual motion in the design.

The redesign presents the same information, but in a clearer, cleaner way that is easy to read. It isn’t complicated, because it doesn’t need to be. Also, because I don’t have all day to redesign ads, this layout was made to save time. All told, it probably took about an hour from concept to finished product to do.

I also did another redesign to take advantage of a calendar layout that we’re all familiar with.

 

 

This second redesigned ad simply puts the date and time information in calendar format. I think I might like it more than the first design because the information is even easier to take in at a glance.

Other than changing up the date/time layout, I left most of the rest of the layout the same. I just moved the icons so they serve as visual interest and a bridge between the calendar and the “Spring out of Stress” event information. Again, I used three and just changed up one to see if I liked it better. I could easily swap it out for the conversation bubbles, but I saw so many sticky notes being used in those two weeks that I thought it would be an appropriate icon to use.

Because I was reusing the same basic layout as the first redesign option, this one took much less time to do.

And, the best part about creating a design for an ad that will be run every term is that you can just swap out the dates/times and you are good to go. You now have a template that doesn’t even look like a template!

So, I hope this example gave you some ideas for your next design or redesign project. There’s a lot to design and a lot more we could go into about why and how I chose different elements, but I wanted to give an overview today.

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