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Librarian Design Share

inspiration for library creatives

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Veronica Arellano Douglas

Instruction Coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries

A New Beginning

seedlings sprouting

In January we announced that we would be sunsetting Librarian Design Share. It was not a decision we took lightly, and it was one we mulled over for months. In response we heard from so many people about the ways in which Librarian Design Share had helped them. Thank you so much for reading, commenting, retweeting, and generally supporting this site.

Among these responses were folks asking if we’d consider passing along the torch to a new set of administrators who could keep Librarian Design Share going. It wasn’t something we had even thought of at that point, but the idea was exciting. Fast forward a month and a half, and this idea has turned into a reality.

We are so excited to announce that we are passing the Librarian Design Share torch to two new administrators, Naomi Gonzales and Jessica Denke. These wonderful, creative, and enthusiastic librarian-designers will be making Librarian Design Share their own. They will continue to cultivate a space where library workers can share designs and be inspired by the creativity of others. With that said, let’s get to know Naomi and Jess a bit better:

photo of jess denke

Hi!  I’m Jess, and I’m the Assessment and Outreach Librarian at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  I serve as the liaison to the social sciences and spend a lot of my time teaching and collaborating with faculty and students.  I’ve been very fortunate to have encouraging bosses and mentors who have allowed me to pursue design work in each of my library positions.  I’ve felt inspired and encouraged by the work featured in Librarian Design Share and by the opportunity to share my own work with this community.  I’m so excited to be able to support the design work being done in libraries, this community is awesome!  You can find me on Twitter @missjessmlis – in addition to design, I love talking about all things #critlib and #infolit.  If you send me a picture of your cats I will send one of mine in return!

photo of naomi gonzales

Hello Librarian Design Share readers! I’m the Web Management Librarian at the University of Houston-Downtown in Houston, Texas and am thrilled to be able to continue the good work of April and Veronica! Like many other librarians, I fell into design years ago mostly due the “other duties as assigned” part of my job right out of library school. I did the best I could for a couple of years before discovering Librarian Design Share and the community of other self-taught librarians. Currently, I find myself diving deeper into the design waters and have become interested in universal design and learning how usability, accessibility and design all work together. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, making cocktails, and am also an admin for Librarian Wardrobe.

So, forget all that sunsetting stuff. It’s a new day around here and Veronica and I are confident that this site will only improve with new energy behind it! Keep the love and clicks coming, along with the great designs that you are all creating. We’ll be following along, too.

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Flyers: Our Bread and Butter

April and I started our foray into graphic design for libraries designing humble flyers. We wanted to share information with our community about library events, hours, policies, and practices. Today’s post, the final Librarian Design Share post, brings us back to where it all began. Here are some lovely flyers to close out our site.

nov holiday craft.jpg
Created by Marisol Gerena from Plattekill Public Library using Microsoft Publisher
StudyPaws
Created by Christine Seliga, Library Services Specialist at Pima Community College – West Campus using Microsoft Publisher and Canva to advertise therapy dog study break.
IT'S COSMIC.jpg
Created by Christine Seliga, Library Services Specialist at Pima Community College – West Campus Library for a book display celebrating the solar eclipse. Created using Canva, Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Paint.
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Research Guides with Style

Springshare’s Libguides have become an integral part of our work as librarians, and although we’ve all come to accept certain best practices in their creation, there’s still the matter of making well-presented information look good. Miyo Sandlin, Digital Services and Instruction Librarian at St. Francis College, recently revamped the library’s APA Style research guide with an eye towards usability, aesthetics, and style.

Continue reading “Research Guides with Style” →

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Designing Dewey

Today’s submission is from Ashley Schmidt, who designed these library shelf endcaps while employed at Fort Worth Library. Here’s Ashley in her own words:

Continue reading “Designing Dewey” →

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Year in Review Infographics

We have two new Year in Review infographics for you courtesy of Debbie Lind, Director of Wallowa Public Library, and Amy Kitchen, Marketing and Communications Graphic Designer for the Johnson County Public Library. Both designs do an excellent job highlighting the ins and outs of a year at a busy public library and share statistics with easy-to-read graphics and clean layouts. Continue reading “Year in Review Infographics” →

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Need Library Volunteers?

Public libraries thrive on their volunteer base, and Olivia Allen, Library Public Assistant at McMinnville Public Library, wanted to create a brochure that would help her library recruit the best and the brightest.

I made this so we could have something to hand out to people interested in volunteering. Before we had this, we would give them the application to fill out. I wanted there to be something they could look at to get an idea of what volunteering is like instead of a big intimidating form. We really simplified all the information we could stuff onto the brochure, so this way it is easy to understand and it doesn’t feel like we expect them to make a decision right away. It also states the volunteers keep the library running, which is so true, and that is definitely the first impression we want to give. I used Canva to create this design.

You can find this brochure on the Librarian Design Share Google Drive.

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Learn the Terms

When Gail Schaub, Cara Cadena, Patricia Bravender, and Christopher Kierkus, surveyed 750 students at Grand Valley State University, one thing was clear: the language of information literacy can be complex and confusing. To combat misunderstandings, Gail began a collaboration with graphic arts professor Vinicius Lima where students would create visual representations and definitions of frequently used information literacy and library terms. The resulting campaign–Learn the Terms–resulted in some beautiful work by student artists, Stephen Dobrzynski, Jacob Luettke, Micah Martin, Carissa Storms. You can read more about this amazing collaboration and view all of the resulting artwork via the Grand Valley State University’s Open Teaching Tools.

Here’s Gail describing this collaborative project:

The “Learn the Terms” campaign was the result of a study I did with colleagues. We discovered in a survey of over 750 students on campus (a representative sampling), that 50% of our students don’t know the meanings of words they hear regularly in classrooms and on syllabi, terms like scholarly, peer-review, and even journal.

 We published our findings, but I knew that  we had to let others know, and offer some kind of solution. I collaborated with Vinicius Lima, a professor of graphic arts here, and his students created these designs that we’ve since produced and are sharing in the library and beyond. The designs are in our institutional repository for sharing:http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/oer_teaching/2/

There’s a new group of students working on designs for a new list of eight terms for creation in the coming year. It’s been an incredible experience, being part of the design thinking process with these students, and I’m so enamored by their work, I want to show everyone I possibly can.

We can’t wait to see what new designs this year’s students develop!

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Sunsetting Librarian Design Share

Photo of a Sunset by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Hello, friends.

As difficult as this is, I want to get right to the point: At the end of this month, April and I will be sunsetting Librarian Design Share. What does that mean, you ask? It means that we will no longer be posting to the site, BUT the site will remain live, as will the Google Drive with all of the amazing designs you’ve shared with the Librarian Design Share community over the years.

April and I started this project 5 years ago. It was a true labor of love. Something we started because our day-to-day work involved a healthy dose of graphic design and visual creative work. We wanted to create a space where those of us in libraries could share our creativity, learn from one another, grow our graphic design skills, and adapt beautiful work. What followed was better than we could have ever imagined.

YOU helped us grow Librarian Design Share into a vibrant, fun, supportive community. We’ve learned from you, been wowed by your work, and amazed at how you’ve adapted designs. We are so honored to have provided a platform for the work of so many talented librarians. From the bottom of our hearts: Thank you.

Why is this the end?

Over the past few years April and I have been through some pretty big career changes. April’s now a Library Dean, and my own career focus has been much more on instruction coordination and critical information literacy. As much as library outreach and graphic design will always have a place in our hearts, our careers have taken us on a new journey. We’re excited to find out what new projects await us.

Now for the details

You may have noticed that April and I haven’t been posting to Librarian Design Share with any regularity. We sincerely apologize. Our work and personal life has taken us in so many different directions that it’s been very difficult to devote time to this meaningful project.

Over the next two weeks we will be posting designs that have already been submitted to us via gmail. We will no longer be accepting new design submissions. So keep an eye out on Twitter for the last few designs from Librarian Design Share. We hope you enjoy them.

Again, LibrarianDesignShare.org will remain live for the next year or so, as will our Google Drive repository. After that April and I will decide on the future fate of the site.

For now, we want to say, again, THANK YOU. ❤

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Love for Logos

Data in the ATL logo

Some of my favorite design inspiration comes from logo design. I love following logo design boards on Pinterest and discovering interesting typography, color combinations, and unique layouts. Today’s design is a great logo from Kelsey Jordan and Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh at the Georgia State University Library.

Data in the ATL is a speaker series that brings in members of the Atlanta data science community to share their experiences and demonstrate how they use data analysis to improve the city of Atlanta and create innovative models for change. This is the first time the Georgia State University Library has run this series, and we needed a logo to identify the events and help them stand out among our other workshop offerings on the library calendar. My fellow librarian Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh came up with the original idea for the type set against the Atlanta skyline, but we needed to tweak the text spacing and replace the previous skyline .jpeg image with cleaner, more detailed linework. I used Adobe Photoshop to redesign the skyline, with the help of reference images and Google Earth to find the perfect perspective of the city’s most prominent buildings.

I love the color combination of orange and aqua–it’s definitely one I’ve used in the past–and the type choice of Gill Sans MT. The words look great against the dark grey skyline.

You can find the original, adaptable Photoshop file of this logo on the Librarian Design Share Google Drive.

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