Promoting Library Event for Author Annette Simon

8.5x11 inch sign and other collaterals utilized the author's unique illustrations

Quarter-page handbills

Author Annette Simon will speak at the Alachua County Library District in Gainesville, Florida on Tuesday 23, 2014. 

Simon's illustrations of robots that she created using the computer software application Quark XPress—which was actually created for multi-page layout design and publishing purposes—provides for simplistic, bold and colourful images that are perfect for attracting age-appropriate audiences to the children's books she writes. They also make for great visuals to help promote her speaker event at the library. I liked the simple and clean looking promotional marketing advertising that resulted from using her illustrations.

Public Service Announcement Ad

To help promote her visit, the following marketing collaterals were designed
(and printed for distribution):

8.5x11 Sign (12)
Quarter-page Handbill (100) 
Library Website Banner Ad (1)
4.938x4 inch Black/White Newspaper Print Ad (1)
Half-page Colour Publication Print Ad (1) 
Broadcast Television Public Service Announcement (1)

Newspaper print advertisement

Full-colour print advertisement

Library website banner ad.

Logo Design for Library Summer Palooza Event

After 25 years of hosting a Literary Festival event in October, the Alachua County Library District decided the time had come to integrate it into the Summer Reading Program and rebrand the newly appointed August event as the "Summer Reader Palooza," that celebrated the end of the Summer Reading program and kicked off the back-to-school season.

To initiate branding of this new event, the library required a new event identity. I wanted the mark to appeal to the age-appropriate audience of children, so I selected a playful yet easy to read display font and cheerful colour scheme. I also created the icon of a book and inset it into a modified clip art sun icon to provide an easily recognizable association to books and summer. 

I developed a few logo variations until I came up with four that worked well, then selected the one that looked like it would have the highest technical reproduction integrity, as well as what I hoped would have strongest potential for remaining fresh and have staying power — perhaps one that could last for another 25 years! The final mark is shown here in its two options, full colour and black/white. 

Final logo files were passed to the client for using on documents and publicity that they created. The only application of the new identity I used it on was a web banner posted on the library website, seen below.

Web banner ad used for library website.

Integrated Library Literacy Collateral Re-Design

A variety of new and redesigned integrated marketing collateral materials for the Literacy
 office include 8.5x11 signs, quarter page handbills, recruitment cards and utility bill insert,
 a tri-fold brochure, a six-page tutor handbook, and a 24-page PowerPoint presentation.

In 2013 the Alachua County Library District hired a new literacy coordinator. I felt this was an opportune time to tackle the job of updating the literacy office's array of materials with a redesign so all collaterals were better integrated with one another. 

Previously designed items borrowed from each other but lost a sense of continuity when seen as a whole. This redesign would take the opportunity to maximize use of its primary visual image of a globe, simplify the colour palette from red, white and blue to shades of green with white, refine the typographical fonts and treatments, and to broaden the use of a simplified corporate brandmark.

I started with the most pressing of items needed, quarter page handbills that advertised the service to patrons in need, then additional ones used to recruit potential tutors. While the both the fronts and backs of these two-sided card stock items would look very similar, both would utilize different headlines geared toward their appropriate audience. Similarly, contact information on the backs of each would be adjusted to suit the appropriate reader. The response was so tremendous that I had to order second and third printings of the cards to keep up with demand as they disappeared from where they were distributed in libraries and around the county.

Next up was a redesign of the existing Literacy Office brochure. Both updated and new information were provided, so a new layout was created to arrange and display sections of text into shorter blocks for easy reading. About the same time that the brochure was being developed, a website blog icon was created based on the cover of the brochure which used a green band of colour with white text reversing out of it overlaid the green globe.

The same design solution for the Literacy Office brochure and blog icon was then employed in development of aTutor Handbook design. A fresh re-write of the six-page document text was matched with an equally refreshed new look and that would maintain the same typographical treatment from the brochure for strengthening brand continuity.

For tutor training, a 24-page PowerPoint presentation was created utilizing the same design elements and sensibilities. 

While tutor training was underway, agreements with existing and new tutoring sites required advertising of their locations and dates. One quarter-page handbill design was used both as a handbill as well as a utility bill insert. Other single and two-sided handbills and associated 8.5x11 inch signs for posting were produced in both English and Spanish language to better serve both speaking populations. 

Lastly (for the time-being), a point of purchase sign was created for fundraising during one of the local Friends of the Library book sales. Placement of the sign at a location outside of the library where book lovers and supporters of the library mission congregated was a great idea and hopefully produced measurable results for the library's literacy program.

Projects included:

200 internally printed tutor recruitment cards 

+ a revised printing of 200

400 internally printed reading help cards 

+ additional reprints of 400, 600, & 5000

55 internally printed literacy office brochures 

2500 vendor printed literacy office brochures

150 internally printed six-page tutor handbooks

One local utility bill insert advert .pdf

One library Website Blog Icon .jpg

24-page tutor training PowerPoint presentation

40 Two-sided English / Spanish quarter-page handbills

11 New classes 8.5x11 inch Spanish version sign

11 New classes 8.5x11 inch English version sign

One "Help Promote Literacy" 8.5x11 inch sign .pdf

Stay tuned, because more marketing opportunities are continually being explored, and along with them, additional design projects.

Doctor Who? Library Event Marketing Designs

Banner ad displayed on library website.

Doctor Who is coming to town by way of your library event, and you're wanting to teleport some promotional marketing materials your way in a flash. What to do? Just wave your "sonic screwdriver" in the air? No, you call your crafty graphic designer to do some image research and magically blend the results all together to create a unique, custom promotional image for your event. Then you stand back and watch as he expertly maximizes this single image in such a way as to create an integrated series of different promotional marketing items to promote your event with consistency for greater impact and recognition.

Sourced images used for new illustration.

Where to start? How about with providing sufficient time for your designer to do a good job for you. You've spent how many days and weeks, maybe even months thinking and planning for this event? Why not let your designer in on the action as early as you are. Then you'll be working together as a team, not just dropping off "the laundry" in his lap while asking how soon can you get it back. Some ideas you have may influence the direction of the design process; likewise, some design decisions might even inspire ideas for your event. Without providing sufficient time for generating marketing concepts, making adjustments based on feedback, and then distributing the final collaterals, your event is otherwise destined to hobble along with less impressive quality and less time to reach the full scope of your potential audience.

An 8.5x11 inch sign for posting at locations.

At my library, internal clients are asked to provide a 4-6 week advance notice of their projects. Unfortunately, that happens only about 50-75% of the time. Fortunately for me the first part of this project came in with sufficent notice; unfortunately, the other half was requested urgently and delivered with less than three days notice.

For development of a centerpiece illustration, I first sourced (looked) for public domain images I could use to create a custom illustration of the iconic "tardis" booth that Doctor Who uses to teleport himself through space and time. I wanted to give the stationary booth a dynamic, energized appearance, so I looked for radiating light rays, electrified-looking time delayed light patterns, colourful swirling shapes, clouds, glass, metallics, and other materials. Once I had a collection of images that looked like they could work together to provide me with the results I wanted, I layered them in Photoshop and experimented with a variety of colour balance sliders, effects, and filters to produce a dynamic, new image unique to our event.

Quarter page handbill arrangement
on 8.5x11 inch page.

I first applied the illustration to the 8.5x11 inch sign, then submitted for client review and feedback. Once all content and aesthetic details were approved on this initial design concept, I applied them to the remaining collaterals, repurposing the arrangement of illustration and typography to each individual piece as appropriate, taking care to be mindful about text size legibility for readers.

While I was sourcing for images I could use to incorporate into my illustration, I came across a wide range of Doctor Who related assemblage designs created for public consumption by artist CyberDrone (http://cyberdrone.deviantart.com) for a company called Cubeecraft (cubeecraft.com). These designs included images you could print out flat on card stock using your office or desktop printer, then cut out and fold together into three-dimensional Doctor Who characters, a tardis, sonic screwdriver, video arcade machine and other items. I printed out a few different tardis booth renderings, folded three versions into their final shapes and presented them to the librarians to see if they might be of any use as options for event activities. They liked them and decided they would indeed enjoy to include them at the event.

Printed tardis materials and fabrication process.

About a week later, one of the librarians said that they liked the mini-tardis constructions so much that they wanted to paint an old refrigerator cardboard box into the image of a tardis. With the event only three days away, I doubted they'd make it in time, so I suggested I try to print out a full scale (over six foot) large-format image of the  mini assemblage tardis I had provided them with earlier. A test print revealed I could indeed get a good quality print out of the artwork, so I made some modifications to it (added an additional set of square panels to make it higher overall, remade the call box text panel because the text was not sharp, removed the door sign for a new one to be placed on later, created new hardware door pull and lock, created new window textures, and lightened the overall colour globally to help compensate for printer ink gain). I then printed out the large tardis walls. The print out proportions didn't perfectly match the box, so I had to print out an additional wall print to cannibalize for adding a little extra strip of colour around the base, as well as for fabricating the additional pyramid and light beacon features that topped off the tardis. The entire project materials only required use of the printer paper, sissors, duct tape, double and single sided clear tape, and the cardboard box. Total construction took about six hours.

The dalek is put to work around the library.

After the librarians marveled at the completed tardis box, one asked if I could print out an enlarged image of a dalek (robot) to a size that might compliment the life-sized tardis. Using the large format printer, I printed the dalek to the size of my largest remaining piece of cardboard (32x52 inches), then cut the shape out. Afterwards, I decided to have a little fun with it, and put it to work for me as I completed fulfillment of the publicity materials. You can see that the dalek helped monitor the printing of a poster of itself; used the cutting board to chop the quarter page handbills, looked for a book about robots in the stacks, brushed up on its upcoming event presentation skills by reading Dale Carnegie's book How to Make Friends and Influence Others, and cleaned up after itself--demonstrating workplace production and leadership qualities that a few staff members could benefit from by taking notice of themselves. 

16x20 inch contest gift poster design.

Just when I thought I'd cleared every imaginable last minute marketing design request, there was one more: "wouldn't it be great if we could make a version of the publicity sign into a poster to use as a give-away for winning a contest?" Sure...of course it would! Easy enough, with a little modification to repurpose the sign into an event poster, and wahlah!, instant poster design, x2 for winners of event contests and x3 for additional event announcement signs. 

After promotional and event materials were completed, photos were taken at the event, edited down to the best, and left to librarians to publish to the library Flickr account. I've posted one shot below to show a view of the tardis lurking in the background, and an easel display in the foreground that announced the opportunity to win a poster of the same.

Scope of work included:

(4) 8.5x11 inch signs
(60) Quarter page handbills
(1) Website banner ad
(5) 16x20 inch gift posters & promotional signs
(1) 32x52 inch dalek display poster mounted to board
(6) 33x74.5 inch tardis box & other associated printed elements for full scale dimensional display construction
(30) Event day photography

16x20 inch gift poster display sign at event. Tardis in background.

Two Winning Library Marketing Design Entries at the American Library Association 2014 PR Xchange Awards

Cover of winning THINK... newsletter / program guide / calendar of events.

Congratulations !

In May I was notified that I received two 2014 National PR Xchange Best of Show Awards from the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association's Public Relations and Marketing Section of the American Library Association. The winning entries were for a brochure titled "Things With Wings" and for the electronic version of our library newsletter, THINK... which is delivered as both print and online products. 

The official categories for these two winning entries are identified as:
Bibliographies / Booklists / Materials Promoting Collections - print category: 

“Things With Wings Booklist Brochure,” $6 - $20 million budget category

and 

Calendars of Events / Newsletters - electronic category:

“THINK... Spring 2013  Newsletter & Program Guide,” $6 - $20 million budget category 

Considering there were 345 entries submitted by both public and private libraries nationwide and that contest committee chairs typically have entries judged by a panel of design, marketing communications and public relations professionals rather than librarians, it is an honor to be recognized for the design work I do on behalf of the library district I serve in Alachua County, Florida. A link to the winning issue (and other issues) of THINK... newsletter can be found here: http://www.aclib.us/think-archive .

Winning entries will be on display June 29, from 11:00am-1:30pm at the PR Xchange event which is part of the American Library Association annual conference, this year being held in Las Vegas. And, although I won't be personally in attendance, award certificates will be presented during the Best of Show Ceremony that same Sunday. The event provides an opportunity for visitors to browse through, be inspired by, and take home publicity materials offered by libraries around the country.

The annual Best of Show at PR Xchange recognizes the very best public relations materials produced by libraries in the past year. Entries will be evaluated based on content, originality, and design by a team of experts in public relations, graphic design, communications, and marketing who select the winner(s) in each category. The Best of Show Awards are sponsored by the Library Leadership Administration and Management Association's Public Relations and Marketing Section and are overseen by the PR XChange Committee. More information about the PR Xchange can be read here: http://www.ala.org/llama/awards/prxchange_bestofshow . 

Images of the 2014 Best of Show winning entries are located online at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/97060948@N06/ . Winning entries for 2013 are posted at https://www.flickr.com/photos/97060948@N06/sets/ (of which I had one winning entry that year as well).

Brochure exterior cover and interior panel views (placed on tan background for better viewing of dimensions).

Marketing Designs for a New Library Grand Opening Event

Roadside sign announces opening of new library after opening day.

Invitation (folded) was printed on card stock, two invites per 8.5x11 inch page.
Event program (lower right) was also printed in the same manner, but not folded.

Grand opening public service 
announcement ad.

In 2011 the Alachua County Library District received permission from the city of Gainesville, Florida to build a new branch library. After that agreement and until they could build a permanent building, a mobile trailer was used as a functioning library. Finally, in 2013, work on the permanent structure began and leading up to its opening, the library wanted to get word out that a grand opening celebration would take place.

I looked back at previously designed marketing collaterals for the mobile unit's grand opening as a basis for continuing the theme of "building the future." That series of collaterals made use of a blue print background, a rainbow, and a few architectural tools such as a t-square. An announcement for ground breaking on the new permanent location site used a shovel silhouette along with the rainbow as part of the handle. You can see samples of those materials in my earlier blog posts here http://librarygraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2011/12/cone-park-library-branch-grand-opening.html and here http://librarygraphicdesign.blogspot.com/2013/04/library-groundbreaking-ceremony.html .

Post grand opening public service
 announcement ad.

Now that the permanent building had architectural renderings, I decided to use the architect's elevation drawing as line art for the basis of the new permanent building's grand opening design collaterals. I combined the elevation drawing with a sepia-toned wood grain image to add colour to it and to become the central art element on all collaterals. For purposes of continuity from piece-to-piece of the new collaterals, I made use of the same wood grain texture as a border treatment and within outlined text of the words "Grand Opening."

Website home page banner ad.

The first marketing piece to be distributed was an invitation, printed two up on a full page, then trimmed and folded down to be a quarter-paged sized card that could be opened. The 300 physical copies would be conventionally mailed out to recipients. A second invitation version saved as a .jpg would be embedded as an image into emails invitations sent out to additional recipients.

8.5 x 11 inch sign to post
in existing branch before
transfer of materials into
 the new library branch.

Two television broadcast public service announcement ads were created. One for announcing the grand opening event, and a second one for long term use after the grand opening. A 23x34 inch poster was also created for use in a free-standing frame to be displayed in the Headquarters Library lobby.

Closer to the grand opening day, a website banner ad and a secondary blog icon image would also appear on the library website to announce the grand opening and link to a blog post for details.

Because the mobile library unit would still be in operation during construction of the new permanent building, a time would come when materials from the mobile unit would need to move to the permanent site. A sign was created to provide advance notice for that disruption of service on the days that transfer of materials would happen. 

Library lobby poster.

Roadside yard signs were also created to be used along the stretch of road that passed in front of the new library location. One designed set appeared to announce the grand opening event, a second designed set appeared the day of the grand opening, and a final set appeared after the grand opening day to announce that the permanent library building was now open for business. The 24x29 inch signs were printed on large format paper and laminated for protection from inclement weather.

For the day of the grand opening, an event program was created, printed front and back on card stock, two programs to an 8.5x11 inch page. A diagram of the building's floorplan was also created to help visitors navigate the new space. And lastly, a pair of certificates were designed to present to the Library Foundation and Friends of the Library organizations for their generous support in helping to make the new library possible look and function to the highest of expectations.

Email invitation image.

Photos of the grand opening event can be viewed here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/acld/sets/72157638731665456/

Event poster showed floorplan 
sections of new library.

Items created for publicizing the new library: 

300 copies: Grand Opening Event Invitation

1 copy: Grand Opening Event Email Invitation

1 copy: Grand Opening PSA #1

1 copy: New Library Open PSA #2

1 copy: Grand Opening Event Website Banner

Donor certificate.

1 copy: New Library Open Blog Icon

4 copies: Library Closed (during collection shift) 8x11 inch Signs

1 copy: 20x30 inch Grand Opening Announcement Lobby Poster

3 versions / 6 prints each: 24x19 inch Yard Signs for Pre-Grand Opening, Day-Of Grand Opening; and Now Open Post Grand Opening

Donor certificate.

100 copies: Grand Opening Event Program

Floorplan

1 copy: Grand Opening Event Colour Coded 

24x19 inch Poster

1 copy: Cake Decoration Image

1 copy: Grand Opening Event 11x8.5 inch Appreciation Certificate for Friends of the LIbrary donor

1 copy: Grand Opening Event 11x8.5 inch Appreciation Certificate for Foundation donor

Event program front and back.