signs

Friday Design: Women’s History Month Book Display Sign

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? I hope you are keeping healthy and safe. Remember to keep washing those hands and not touching your face (easier said than done, right?). My university has suspended in-person classes this week, but the library is still open so work goes on. It is a weird state to be in, but I find working on my graphic design work allows me to find a state of flow and step back from the constant news cycle for a minute, which is so important. So today I want to share with you the sign I created for our Women’s History Month Book Display that is curated by two of my colleagues.

letter-sized poster for library book display, Our Bodies: Women's History Awareness Month

This sign (or mini-poster) was created entirely in Adobe Spark, which has become my go-to for creating graphics when I don’t have a lot of time [aka only 20 minutes or so to create something before running off to another meeting]. I never like using the templates or layouts without customizing them, but I do appreciate having the stock photo searching integrated in and have figured out how to fuss around with the copy much faster than before.

But what about this sign did I really want to talk about?

Well, I could talk about using justifying type and matching colors and the importance of layout and odd numbers to move the eye. Or the importance of readability and having all the elements of a design enhance the central message. But I’ve talked about that before (and I’ll talk more about that again). Today, though, I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about the importance of representation. I’ve thought about this a lot in the last few weeks for a number of reasons, not least of which is that my university is incredibly diverse and I want everyone to feel at home and see themselves in the library. So for this sign it was important to me to showcase diverse women intentionally and not as an afterthought.

And it was a bit difficult to find photos that didn’t recreate stereotypes about women generally and women of color specifically. But it wasn’t as hard as I feared, which shows some movement in the right direction. But we can all do better and be more intentional about representation in our libraries in all that we do. And a big part of that is in our designs, which we have substantial control over.

Representation is important. It’s something we have to be mindful of and intentional about. And that’s part of the overall ethos of design, too. We should be mindful and intentional about what we design and the effects our designs can have on others.

I never saw myself represented as a mixed race person in the library when I was growing up and I don’t want that for others who are growing up now. If I can do my small part to change that, by wielding my graphic design skills, then I will count that in the column of good for the library and for my small portion of the world.

I hope you, too, find ways to wield your graphic design talents and skills to represent everyone in your community through your work.

Stay healthy, stay safe, help others, and I hope you have a relaxing weekend. I’ll be back again soon with more news and notes about designs. Thanks for reading. Allons-y, friends!

 

Friday Design: Fun Busy Bag Sign

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I find it hard to believe we are at the end of another month. The year is truly flying by. Today I want to take a few minutes to talk about signage, specifically for one of the new pilots at my library: busy bags!

For those who aren’t familiar with busy bags, they are small bags filled with toys, games, and books for children to keep them busy while their caretakers are working, attending meetings, etc. In the library, busy bags can allow students to study while the children they are caring for are happy playing with educational (and quiet) toys and looking through books. It’s part of a series of pilots we are doing to make the library more usable for all our students.

And, because busy bags are for children and they are fun, designing a sign explaining what they are and who they are for is fun, too!

Below is the letter-sized sign I created to explain our busy bags to users of our library.

A few things to note that you can use when designing similar signage.

Consistent use of fonts and color schemes : We used the same fonts and color scheme/photo across all our materials for the busy bags. The same title font, Snap ITC, with a rainbow gradient overlay was used for all titles/headings on the sign, checkout sheet, feedback forms, and busy bag tags. The body copy font, Ink Free, was also used consistently on all our busy bag materials.

The color scheme comes from the rainbow colored pencils photo that was used as a background for many of our materials. It is a royalty-free stock photo and was the inspiration for the rainbow gradient overlay for the title/headings.

Both the fonts and colors are fun and friendly and bright: all things we associate with children. This was the time for a bit of whimsy, which is a fun change from a lot of the more serious designs I do for reports and such. 🙂

Branding: All our signage has our library logo on it so users know it is from the library and is a way for us to maintain consistency in our branding.

Consistent alignment and fun tone: Because this sign has more text than most signs, it is left aligned to make it easy to read. We also made the directions as simple and friendly as possible to invite people to use our busy bags.

Remember, everything in a design should support the message. Our message here is: you are welcome, the children you are providing care for are welcome, and please use our busy bags!

All this comes together for a fun and friendly sign! And people have been using the busy bags, which is the most important part. 🙂

Hopefully this gives you some inspiration for the next time you need to design a sign that provides directions while promoting a service or resource. Remember to have fun, remember your audience, and remember that the best signs make things easier to use and hopefully have people coming back to use our services and resources again.

I hope you have a lovely weekend filled with joy and fun. I’ll be back soon with more news and notes about design. Allons-y, friends!

 

Friday Design: Blind Date with a Book

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers, and Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you have a lovely day and get some chocolate, if you like it, and have something fun planned for the weekend. Today, fittingly, I want to talk about a Valentine’s Day tradition at my library and many others, Blind Date with a Book.

Blind Date with a Book is a fun event where we wrap books and place book blurbs in hearts on their covers so people can check out a “blind date” and give a book a chance before judging by its cover. This is the third year we’ve been doing the event and it seems to get more popular every year. We’re already almost out of books!

So what does this have to do with design?

As with any book display, you need to have a sign to let people know what’s up. (I like to call them mini-posters because that just sounds more fun for designing.) While some people may remember the event from last year, for many people it is their first time seeing the display so clarity in how to participate in Blind Date with a Book is essential.

We had to update our instructions this year because we’re putting the review slip in the books and the mini-poster below is the result.

flyer for Blind Date with a Book event

Simple, on-theme, and clear, this design will draw people’s eyes and also make it easy for them to figure out what all the wrapped books are about. I created it using both Adobe Spark and Photoshop, but you could could use whatever design program you like best including Publisher and Gimp.

Because this event only runs for 2 weeks, putting hours of effort into the mini-poster is not possible. Instead I found a stock photo that I liked and decided to use a color ribbon over it so the text is easy to read. It’s a graphic design trick that’s used often because it works so well for so many design needs. I pulled the pink color from the stock photo, changed the opacity so the photo could still be seen and laid the type over in a center alignment as there isn’t a lot of text and many romantic things (think wedding invitations, engagement announcements, etc.) often use center alignment.

I used the same pink color for the solid block of color at the top where I have the title. I used the font, Timberline, for the title because it looks handwritten and romantic and has the brush-lettering feeling that is having a moment right now. I used Gabriola for the instruction text as it has some rhythm to the flow of the letters and is also slightly romantic.

A finishing touch of adding drop shadows to the color ribbon overlay and the photo gave a bit of subtle depth before it was off to print.

This mini-sign’s layout can be adapted for other projects and the colored ribbon is a great design trick to remember when you want to overlay text on top of an image.

I hope this example helps and provides some inspiration for your next design project.

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll be back soon with another design example and tips. Allons-y, friends!