Library Movie Bookmarks

One 8.5x11 inch page accommodated five bookmarks.

Our High Springs library asked for 500 bookmarks to promote their Afternoon at the Movies series that happens every Thursday. So I gathered up a variety of different clip art images ranging from film reels, to cameras, to movie ticket stubs, then worked out a combination that worked well with the required language and printed them out, five to an 8.5x11 inch page, then trimmed to size, leaving a narrow white border around them, due to their irregular shape along the edges.

The ticket stub had been a different shape--stubbier, you might say--with the admit text displayed horizontally on different tickets, so I stretched it out from the middle enough to fill the width of the paper, which also enabled me to fill it with the required language. The background has a slight colour merge in it, and a muted red and olive green compliments the background colour to give the tickets a retro feel.

Angry Birds LIVE at the Library

Event handbills, produced 4-up to one 8.5x11 inch page.

Before I go any further, let me clarify for the record: we don't have any living, angry birds running or flying about in our library. Over at our High Springs Library branch on the other hand, it's another story. Apparently, they've got a lot of them over there. The reason why is because there's a competition going on with those Angry Birds.

Angry Birds is some kind of video game that is a popular download onto cell phones, and that's the extent of my knowledge of it. And yet, I knew enough to ask the librarian requesting promotional materials for it if she had any visuals to go with it. I mean, I'd want to see what them angry birds looked like too...wouldn't you?

So she sent me a link to the website of the company where they make all them birds angry. It provided a variety of screen shots for the different games they developed--among them, the Angry Birds game. I pulled off a couple of my favourite images and combined them together to create the quarter-page handbill my librarian wanted 100 copies of. 

Library Design Projects: Quality vs Quantity

I've been tardy in adding entries to the blog as of mid-November. It's not because I didn't have projects to show. No, on the contrary, I've been so busy that by the time I returned home and stopped my regular work on design projects there, little time or energy was left to write even one more dang thing about design. 


In the 36 work days since the beginning of November until 23 December, I've created 113 unique projects, some of which contain design variations within the same project. So if I'm doing my math right, that's just over three projects per day that I'm completing and shipping out of the department for the library district. I always do the best that I can within the parameters I have to work with, but that's real quantity-vs-quality stuff in my book. So when people requesting new work wonder why I start whining about how pressed for time I am, there's the big squeeze in numbers above for all you bean counters.


With my blogging tardiness in mind, I'll play a little catch-up on it by posting some of the more notable projects I've worked on for the library since my last entry on 16 November. I hope you'll find something you like!

Lamenting Over My Laminator

Envision this: I'm in my design office looking out through floor-to-ceiling windows onto the back courtyard of the library. Bright red azalea flowers speckle hedges lining the edge of the building. It looks like springtime, but it is actually December. December in Florida. Ahhh...I think dreamily to myself, admiring the view and recalling what December in Nebraska and New York looked like for me back in the day. 

Next, my view panned into my office. What I saw inside immediately snuffed out any harmonious reflection I had about how beautiful the world was. Instead of being surrounded by beauty, I was surrounded by a menagerie of unsightly crap. Rolls of paper, card board boxes stacked up on one another, an out-of-order laminator that has become the bain of my existence, and facilities-owned step ladders rising up and into the ceiling where a water pipe had poured water down onto the drop ceiling, then onto a computer table and the floor, leaving a huge wet spot on the carpet. Ahhh...so much for harmony and beauty, I sighed. My office environment was in stark contrast to the beautiful azaleas and courtyard on the other side of the windows.

Because it is Christmas, let's use my office laminator as a parable for life for the modern day designer. Parables have been a favourite method of story telling for ages, so sit back and relax...clear your thoughts and let me tell you a little story about my life as a modern day designer.

Think back, if you will, to those glorious days in the 1950s when the boom of modern, space-age technology promised the average working American a more efficient, effortless way of life. Ah yes...automatic washing machines, toaster ovens, electric appliances of all manner—even cars with fins. Yes, those were the days when the sun looked its brightest as it crested the morning horizon, overlooking bottles of milk that were delivered fresh to your front door by the milk man.

Now, spin your time machine forward to present day. Here I am, looking at my design department's GBC Ultima 65 Laminator Canadian Model 4250. To me, it appears to have also been forged during that era of ultra modernity with a promise of easier days to come for anyone who need to laminate large sheets of paper. This machine—one that surely must have been the technological wonder of the industrial revolution—has now become the bain of my 21st century art room existence. When it works well, it is a dream to have laminated signs. But look out: when it suffers a jam, that promise of a sparkling workplace future comes to a complete halt—much in the same way that the paper and laminate film rolling through it does. 

Top: laminated paper get stuck going
around the rollers, melting in place.
Middle top: cutting/picking through
the laminated paper jam with an X-acto.
Middle bottom: The offending extraction.
Bottom: re-feeding a new paper into
the laminator.

There's no escaping the result of this when a jam occurs. Once it does, the rollers grind to a complete stop. They can't advance any further because of the adhesive wrap-around effect of the material trying to pass around a second time. Unfortunately, the rollers also can't reverse back out of the jam because while it's stuck in this position, the laminate is conveniently melting together and also fusing onto the hot roller surface. To compound the situation, there can be no work done to release the jam until the rollers have cooled down enough to touch, which can take around an hour of wait time. This means whatever project you were just working on will have to find another solution—like being reprinted and hung without laminating. Fortunately, this gummed-up situation rarely occurs when anything extremely important is needed on a tight deadline. I'm sure you believe me about that too...right?

So, how does one remove a jam from the Ultima Laminator? Basically you have to surgically remove it from the rollers. First, you detach and remove the metal feeding tray that you slide paper on top of as it approaches the rollers. Removing the tray will give you access to a lower lamination roller that feeds up and around the roller as it meets film coming from a second roller of lamination film positioned above the lower roller. Once the rollers have cooled sufficiently for you to touch, you must then carefully slice away the lamination-encased paper away from the rollers at an angle parallel to the surface of the roller in order to avoid cutting into the rubber rollers themselves. This is easier said than done, considering the lamination film has melted itself onto the surface of the roller. The process reminds me of trying to pull stickers off of recently purchased merchandise without tearing the stickers themselves. 

Just to put material costs into perspective, GBC—the company that makes the laminator machine—sells two rolls of their 10 millimeter Nap-Lam II lamination film for over US$258.00 per roll. I find this insane, because third party companies buy GBC's film and then sell it to consumers for US$32 per roll. That's just for film. Can you imagine how much it would cost to replace a rubber-wrapped steel rolling pin from GBC? We have to call them to find out; they don't post the price on the internet.

Once you have delicately sliced your way between the melted laminated paper and the roller, you need to advance the roller a short distance so you can try to pull it up off the roller surface. But you can't do this unless you can advance the rollers. They don't freely spin; they are locked into position and need to be advanced by turning the machine back on and using the forward/backward buttons. To do that, however, makers of this laminator require you to reassemble the feeder tray back into its operational position, then close a plastic canopy over the rollers in order for the machine to work. This is crazy! This means every time you need to advance the roller an inch or two, you need to take apart the machine, slice along the lamination film/paper jam, reassemble the machine, and turn it on for a mere second or less to advance the roller, then disassemble the machine to slice through the next segment of material melted onto the roller. Believe me, this is a tremendous waste of time...and designer talent!

In October I encountered such a scenario. A paper jam occurred. After a couple hours, I managed to clear the jam and put the machine back together. The offending project went on without being laminated before I could complete the machine maintenance. A couple weeks later, another jam occurred, and because of the other many design projects I had active deadlines on, I had to let the jam wait until I could get back to it—a couple of weeks later. After clearing that jam, the very next project I pressed into it also jammed. This time, I was so disgusted with the entire situation that I just let it all stay gummed up until I had enough down-time to spend playing repairman again. More weeks passed.

In the meantime, a librarian called to ask if I could produce a sign and laminate it. I had to say that my laminator was out-of-commission. He replied that we could send the project over to one of our other branches that had the same kind of laminator. What? Really? This was the first time I knew we had a second laminator at our disposal. I was happy to create and print the sign, then ship it over to the other branch to request they do the lamination and forward the finished piece on to the requesting librarian. Crisis averted. But in the meantime, my laminator remained in need of attention.

I wondered if perhaps projects were wrapping themselves around the rollers more frequently because of tiny flecks of heated lamination film remaining on the rollers after cutting away earlier jams. These flecks, still stuck to the rollers might possibly be attaching themselves to the new layers of film coming through the rollers as projects were being run through the machine. I decided the best way to find out and ensure that this wasn't the problem was to wipe down the rollers with bestine/turpentine fluid to completely remove the flecks from the rollers. In all, it took three hours to pick away all the layers of emulsified paper and laminator film, then rub the clean rollers down with bestine. Not looking forward to encountering the next jam, I still have yet to thread a new length of film into the machine.

Where the Wild Things Are…in the Library!

Since August our library has been developing and rolling out publicity materials to promote a series of events related to an exhibit currently on display at our Headquarters Library. The exhibit—courtesy of a variety of organizers and sponsors—is entitled In A Nutshell: The Worlds of Maurice Sendak. It will be traveling the nation and stopping at our library to be on display from November 2 through December 16. The Alachua County Library District Headquarters is the only Florida library to host this exhibit.

The American Library Association (ALA) provided a sponsor logos and Sendak illustration images, as well as a highly detailed 11 page instructional manual that, among other things, provided exacting language for how to credit any and all images when used. Additionally, as per the grant agreement for which funding made the exhibit possible, copies of all promotional materials used were to be mailed to the ALA for their records and appreciation as well.

In addition to the exhibit, a variety of related Sendak and/or his book Where the Wild Things Are spin-off events would take place at different branches throughout the Library District. Events included:

• An exhibit opening ceremony event featuring speaker John Cech—an author, Director of the Center for Children's Literature and Culture, and Professor of Children's Literature. Cech will speak about Sendak's influences on children's literature.

• An exhibit closing event entitled “The Immigrant Life & Maurice Sendak,” featuring Dr. Ruth Lowery, professor in the College of Education and expert on immigrant literature, who will discuss the experience of immigrants and how it is reflected in literary works for children.

• A children's storytime puppet show by the Headquarters Puppeteers in their adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are, which will include both human and fabricated characters.

• Sendak related Pre-School Storytimes in three different branches for children.

• Children's film events in two branches showing the movie Where the Wild Things Are.

• A maskmaking event for children.

• A Wild Wear for the Rumpus event for children.

• A Wild Rumpus Party for children.

• And a Wild Things Build a Boat event for children.

To promote the full complement of these events, the design department utilized almost every possible marketing tool it had available. Here's the volumous line-up:

175x quarter-page exhibit invitations

3 different black/white and colour print ads in local publications

3x 11x17 inch signs for the exhibit

2x 8.5x11 inch signs for the exhibit

50x 5.5x8 inch exhibit informational handbills

1x 45x45 inch large format display exhibit poster

1x 30x30 inch large format display puppet show poster

2x 23x34 inch large format display puppet show posters

2x 11x17 inch puppet show posters

1x website banner for exhibit opening event

1x website banner for exhibit closing event

1x website banner for puppet show

1x blog icon

1x e-mail blast image

1x public service announcement (PSA) for the opening event

1x public service announcement (PSA) for the closing event

1x article in the Library quarterly newsletter, THINK...

Listing of each event in the program directory section of THINK...

A selection of the many promotional collaterals used to publicize
the Sendak exhibit and associated events.

 Additional publicity was generated by individual library branch event coordinators and the public relations and marketing director, including online event listings, library branch displays, and press releases. Even I'm not aware of the full scope of publicity that may have occurred outside of my own department, but as you can see, promotional saturation was considerable.

Cutting out scanned, printed, then foam core board mounted book characters
for placing into a youth services diorama display box. 

Another interesting promotional feature was created by Headquarters Youth Services librarians. They built and installed a scenic diorama into what we refer to as a "peep box"—a 3x3x2 foot wooden cabinet that has holes cut out of the front cabinet doors so people can see inside the box. Librarians scanned images from the book Where The Wild Things Are, then fabricated a diorama scene inside the cabinet. While they worked on pasting up images for a backdrop and creating free-standing trees out of cut paper and old cardboard tubes, I cut out scanned images of the book's characters that had been spray mounted onto foam core board so they could be suspended from the cabinet's interior ceiling into their diorama positions. The result was a nifty peep box scene for anyone willing to get down on their hands and knees to look through the cabinet door holes.

How timely: a Wild Things gift card!

In two unrelated yet ironically semi-related events, additional Where The Wild Things Are happenings occurred for me personally. In October, my sister sent me a Barnes & Nobel bookstore gift card that displayed an images of Where The Wild Things Are scenes—and she had no idea that I had even been working on promoting the Sendak library events!

Another event occurred one morning when I arrived at work and immediately spotted a large spider poised on the wall directly above my computer. With a leg span almost the size of the palm of my hand, I first thought it might be a faux plastic or rubber spider left over from a recent library Halloween display—put there as a practical joke to spook me. I stood up on my chair and cautiously leaned in to take a good, long look at it until I finally decided that it was definitely no rubber toy, then hurried to find something I could capture it in before it scampered off to unknown regions only to find its way onto me when I least expected.

With no empty container in the art room, I eventually found myself down the hall in the employee break room where I located an large, empty plastic Tupperware™ bowl and lid. I hurried back, hoping the spider would still be where I last saw it. I was happy to find that it was, so I carefully covered the spider with the bowl (with a sigh of relief, I might add), then slid the lid in between the wall and bowl until the spider was inside. I took it outside to a creek behind the library where I released it back "into the Wild." All this—but not before I could chronicle the event just for you! (see photos). And oh yes…not to worry: I didn't forget to wash that person's Tupperware™ before I put it back in the break room. Shhh...they'll never know!

All things considered, it just goes to show that there's all kinds of Wild Things in the library!

Library Monthly Event Signs, November 2011

November event posters utilized a variety of layouts based on the same theme.

It's autumn again, and also time for another set of monthly event listing signs for the ACLD branch libraries. I typically begin working about two to three weeks in advance of when I want to get these signs to the libraries. I pull event listing text from the library website calender and repurpose it for the printed signs. Along the way, text is edited and styled, clip art and/or public domain photography is used for visuals, then proofs are sent out to branch and program managers to review for correctness. A couple rounds of edits are allowed, then once approved, printed out and sent via our Library courier team to each branch that uses the event listing signs (three of the 11 currently do not due to lack of events or a preference to create their own). 


The entire production process is pretty smooth, albeit a little time consuming. The end result, however, produces a common styling throughout the library district when seen (with exception to one non-compliant branch that creates its own).

Friends of the Library Book Sale

It's that time of the year again. Time to clear out the warehouse of donated books and cleaned out library collections...all to the delight of book readers everywhere. This annual event takes place over 5 days in October and I'll be there to take photos during one of their sale days.

In the meantime, I've developed a few items to promote it including:

1x web ad / webslide (shown above)

1x Television public service announcement (PSA)

1x THINK... newsletter article layout

I pulled together a variety of unrelated free-to-download vector art icons I had collected over the recent months to create the designs, adding and subtracting details from nine different icons to work them into my concept, then added a Friends of the Library logo to one for the finishing touch.