Now Open: Library Teen Space Marketing Designs

The newly created Teen Space identity.

The Teen Space entrance.

The ACLD Headquarters Library recently unveiled its new Teen Space, an area specifically set aside for teen reading, resources, games, and activities. A section of the library that housed the audio/video collection was renovated to create the space, and once everything was in place, a series of openings were held to announce its availability to the public. The space is large and in a partially enclosed corner of the library to help reduce noise levels drifting into the common reading area. A false wall with a window and doorway with the word "TEEN" serves as its entrance. 


For developing promotional materials, I went to inspect the aesthetics of the room. The colour scheme was gray and blue; the natural wood beams overhead were brown. The lettering on the entrance wall a generic helvetica-esque font. Overall, unremarkable if you don't consider the already existing architecture. I hoped the furniture would breath some life into the space later. But in the meantime, invitations, programs, and website banner ads needed to be made.


I wanted to promote the Teen Space as a vibrant, fun, exciting, teen destination of choice. But I couldn't do that with the existing bland gray and blue colour scheme already in place, so I just decided to boldly venture out on my own and hope for the best. I did, however, take my typographical cue from the entrance font style and would use that as the basis of a modern looking identity mark for the space. 


My first sense was to portray a person holding their arms wide apart in a grand gesture to impart the concept of greeting an open space. I wanted to investigate integrating the figure with a flood of light rays bursting forward from a central source to create a sense of dynamic energy. Fortunately, I knew I already had separate public domain clip art elements that could be combined together to achieve this affect, so I sourced for these and alternative choices to experiment with.

Teen Space Grand Opening event invitation front / back.

I also thought of a way to partially "frame" the illustration/text elements to further impart the idea of a defined space, so I used  typographical brackets set wide apart on either side of the text. This way it could "contain" the illustrative/text identity, yet also remain as an unenclosed space too. The brackets are also used in the library's quarterly newsletter, THINK..., so they also had a connection to additional library iconography already in use.

Teen Space Grand Opening program. Side flaps folded over the back to open out to reveal the event schedule.

A series of website banners were created.

Just as I used the colourful background image to show inside of the brackets on the invitation, I would also have it be contained within the word "Teen." The swirling background would center around the open armed human figure to focus attention on the teen. I worked with all the elements until I came up with positioning and size relationships that looked well as a strikingly colourful, vibrant identity mark. Then I applied the image to the front of a quarter page invitation, and utilized a modified set typographical brackets that included the background colour in them (rather than reversed out of it as it was on the front) for the back side to contain the invitation message.


The same identity image was used for the front of the follow-up promotional piece, the event program. I wanted to continue exploring the connotation of spacial relationships, so I made the program long, then folded two panels over the back to meet together in the middle, allowing them to open outward much in the way french doors would. The panels would display the event date and location, and opening the panels outwards would reveal the program schedule of events displayed inside on the program back.

TV PSA image.

Quarter page handbills, 20x30 inch welcome posters, a television public service announcement image, and a series of website banner ads were also created to promote the openings. Each utilized the Teen Space brand identity, and where possible, the library identity as well. At the grand opening event, the Teen Space identity even appeared as frosting on the cake!


Once the opening ceremonies were past, a rethinking and renaming of the Teen Space tagline would change from "A Space Of Their Own" to "A Space Of Our Own." 

Folding / trimming of the grand opening programs. Print two-sided front / back,
trimmed side excess areas, then folded to fit to back seam before trimming top / bottom
so that back flaps were evenly aligned with the front / back center panel.

The grand opening event even included a cake with the Teen Space identity on it!