2012 Eyeo Festival

Tuesday June 5th through Friday June 8th 2012, 500 creatives from numerous fields such as, computer science, art, design, data visualization, gathered together to listen, converse, and participate in the second Eyeo Festival. Held in Minneapolis, MN at the Walker Art Center, the event organizers created an environment of learning, exchange, exploration, and fun. There were various workshops with some top names leading the way. Thoughtfully curated presentations throughout the day complemented keynotes held nightly in party-like atmospheres: Eyeo was an event not to be missed. Ranging from independent artists to the highest levels of innovative companies, Eyeo offered inspiration on many levels.

Why the Eyeo Festival?
As I began to think about what I experienced at the Eyeo Festival, I struggled to express exactly how impactful this event was for me and those I connected with. In a way, Eyeo is like TED and in fact, many presenters have given TED talks. Eyeo has a more targeted focus on art, design, data, and creative code but it is also so much more than that. With an interactive art and sound installation, Zygotes, by Tangible Interaction kicking off the festival, though the video is a poor substitute to actually being there, it still evokes a sense of wonder and possibility. I strongly encourage anyone who is drawn to design, data, art, interaction or to express their creativity through code to attend this outstanding creative event and follow the incredible people that make up the impressive speaker list.

I went to the Eyeo Festival because I like to seek out what professionals in other fields are doing. I like staying curious and stretching outside my comfort zone in big ways, surrounding myself with people doing things I don’t understand, and then trying to understand them. Over the years I’ve been to many library conferences and there are some amazing events with excellent programming but they are, understandably, very library-centric. So, to challenge myself, I decided to go to a conference where there would be some content related to libraries but that was not a library conference. There are many individuals and professions outside of libraries that care about many of the same values and initiatives we do, that work on similar kinds of problems, and have the same drive to make the world a better place. So why not talk to them, ask questions, learn, and see what their perspective is? How do they approach and solve problems? What is their process in creating? What is their perspective and attitude? What kind of communities are they part of and work with?

I was greatly inspired by the group of librarians who have attended the SXSWi Festival which has grown further over the years. There are a now a rather large number of librarians speaking about and advocating for libraries in such an innovative and elevated platform. There is even a Facebook Group where professionals working in libraries, archives, and museums can connect with each other for encouragement, support, and collaborations in relation to SXSWi. Andrea Davis, Reference & Instruction Librarian at the Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, has been heavily involved in offering leadership in getting librarians to collaborate at SXSW. She states, “I’ve found it absolutely invigorating to get outside of library circles to learn from others, and to test the waters on what changes and effects are having on those not so intimately involved in libraries. Getting outside of library conferences keeps the blood flowing across tech, publishing, education. Insularity doesn’t do much for growth and learning.”

I’ve also been inspired by librarians who have been involved in the TED community, such as Janie Herman and her leadership with Princeton Public Library’s local TEDx in addition to her participation in the TEDxSummit in Doha, Qatar. Additionally, Chrystie Hill, the Community Relations Director at OCLC, has given more than one TedX talk about libraries. Seeing our library colleagues represent our profession in arenas broader than libraries is energizing and infectious.

Librarians having a seat at the table and a voice at two of the premier innovative gatherings in the world is powerful. This concept of librarians embedding themselves in communities outside of librarianship has been discussed in a number of articles including The Undergraduate Science Librarian and In the Library With the Lead Pipe.

Highlights
Rather than giving detailed comprehensive coverage of Eyeo, you’ll see a glimpse of a few presentations plus a number of resources so that you can see for yourself some of the amazing, collaborative work being done. Presenter’s names link to the full talk that you can watch for yourself. Because a lot of the work being done is interactive and participatory in some way, I encourage you to seek these projects out and interact with them. The organizers are in the midst of processing a lot of videos and putting them up on the Eyeo Festival Vimeo channel; I highly recommend watching them and checking back for more.

Ben Fry
Principal of Fathom, a Boston based design and data visualization firm, and co-initiator of the programming language Processing, Ben Fry’s work in data visualization and design is worth delving into. In his Eyeo presentation, 3 Things, the project that most stood out was the digitization project Fathom produced for GE: http://fathom.info/latest/category/ge. Years of annual reports were beautifully digitized and incorporated into an interactive web application they built from scratch. When faced with scanning issues, they built a tool that improved the scanned results.

Jer Thorp
Data artist in residence for the New York Times, and former geneticist, Jer Thorp’s range in working with data, art, and design is far and wide. Thorp is one of the few founders of the Eyeo Festival and in his presentation Near/Far he discussed several data visualization projects with the focus on storytelling. The two main pieces that stood out from Jer’s talk was his encouragement to dive into data visualization. He even included 10 year old, Theodore Zaballos’ handmade visualization of The Illiad which was rather impressive. The other piece that stood out was his focus on data visualization in context to location and people owning their own data versus a third party. This lead into the Open Paths project he showcased. He has also presented to librarians at the Canadian library conference, Access 2011.

Jen Lowe
Jen Lowe was by far the standout from all of the amazing Ignite Eyeo talks. She spoke about how people are intrinsically inspired by storytelling and the need for those working with data to focus on storytelling through the use of visualizing data and the story it tells. She works for the Open Knowledge Foundation in addition to running Datatelling and she has her library degree (she’s one of us!).

Jonathan Harris
Jonathan Harris gave one of the most personal and poignant presentations at Eyeo. In a retrospective of his work, Jonathan covered years of work interwoven with personal stories from his life. Jonathan is an artist and designer and his work life and personal life are rarely separated. Each project began with the initial intention and ended with a more critical inward examination from the artist. The presentation led to his most recent endeavor, the Cowbird project, where storytelling once again emerges strongly. In describing this project he focused on the idea that technology and software could be used for good, in a more human way, created by “social engineers” to build a community of storytellers. He describes Cowbird as “a community of storytellers working to build a public library of human experience.”

Additional people + projects to delve into:

Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg of the Google Big Picture data visualization group. Wind Map: http://hint.fm/wind/

Kyle McDonald: http://kylemcdonald.net/

Tahir Temphill: http://tahirhemphill.com/ and his latest work, Hip Hop Word Count: http://staplecrops.com/index.php/hiphop_wordcount/

Julian Oliver: http://julianoliver.com/

Nicholas Felton of Facebook: http://feltron.com/

Aaron Koblin of the Google Data Arts Group: http://www.aaronkoblin.com/ and their latest project with the Tate Modern: http://www.exquisiteforest.com/

Local Projects: http://localprojects.net/

Oblong Industries: http://oblong.com/

Eyebeam Art + Technology Center: http://eyebeam.org/

What can libraries get from the Eyeo Festival?

Libraries and library work are everywhere at this conference. That this eclectic group of creative people were often thinking about and producing work similar to librarians is thrilling. There is incredible potential for libraries to embrace some of the concepts and problems in many of the presentations I saw and conversations I was part of. There are multiple ways that libraries could learn from and perhaps participate in this broader community and work across fields.

People love libraries and these attendees were no exception. There were attendees from numerous private/corporate companies, newspapers, museums, government, libraries, and more. I was not the only library professional in attendance so I suspect those individuals might see the potential I see, which I also find really exciting. The drive behind every presenter and attendee was by far creativity in some form, the desire to make something, and communicate. The breadth of creativity and imagination that I saw reminded me of a quote from David Lankes in his keynote from the New England Library Association Annual Conference:

“What might kill our profession is not ebooks, Amazon or Google, but a lack of imagination. We must envision a bright future for librarians and the communities they serve, then fight to make that vision a reality. We need a new activist librarianship focused on solving the grand challenges of our communities. Without action we will kill librarianship.”

If librarianship is in need of more imagination and perhaps creativity too, there is a world of wonder out there in terms of resources to help us achieve this vision.

The Eyeo Festival is but one place where we can become inspired, learn, and dream and then bring that experience back to our libraries and inject our own imagination, ideas, experimentation, and creativity into the work we do. By doing the most creative, imaginative library work we can do will inspire our communities; I have seen it first hand. Eyeo personally taught me that I need to fail more, focus more, make more, and have more fun doing it all.

Tips for Making Your First Mobile App a Success

About a year ago we launched the Gimme Engine (gimme.scottsdalelibrary.org) – a mobile web book recommendation engine.  Choose one of the categories – Gimme a Clue, Gimme Something Good to Eat, etc – and the Engine will offer you a staff-recommended book from the Scottsdale Public Library collection, complete with summary, staff review, and a quick link to the mobile catalog to check availability or reserve.

Since launch, our app and the Gimme Engine Brain Trust that created it have won a number of awards – including a 2012 OITP Cutting Edge Technology in Library Services award.  What’s our secret?  We are happy to share what we learned in our process with the hope it will help you in your next technology process.

Find out what your users (and future users) want

When our team got together for the first time we had more ideas than we knew what to do with – everything from a mobile formatted version of our web site to a Dewey-caching in library scavenger hunt. We soon realized that in order for us to create a successful, and more importantly, sustainable mobile app, we needed to poll our customers and find out what exactly they want out of a mobile app. Though we had done some basic surveys of staff in the past, we didn’t feel that we were the experts best suited to properly create & distribute a survey that would ultimately drive our entire project.

We hired a local experience design agency called Forty to craft a survey to get the information we so desperately needed. Forty also helped distribute the survey via their social media, email lists and other outlets. This meant that in addition to our customer we would get responses from non-customers as well. This would help us understand if there was a difference in need between customers and future-customers (at least that is how we like to think of our ‘non customers’.)

What they want might be what you already have

There was in fact no real difference between customers and non customer need in the survey results but one thing was clear:  current and future customers had no idea that we already had a mobile catalog with most of the standard functionality that they wanted.  Great, we thought, just get the word out about the mobile catalog and our job is done!  Then we realized no, we still have all this LSTA money that the Arizona State Library was nice enough to give us . . . we should probably spend that out.

Maximize your resources

So we looked at the highest items on the list that we didn’t have in mobile – book reviews and staff recommendations.  That’s when we decided to make the book recommendation app.  As it turned out we already had a lot of the raw materials for the project.  Staff was already doing book reviews and posting them on GoodReads.  We had content enrichment services for bib data and book jackets(Syndetics).  And we had the mobile catalog and the ability to generate RSS feeds of items in the collection (AirPAC and FeedBuilder from Innovative Interfaces).  All we needed was someone with enough experience to put that together.

Back to Forty for the design work and to hire a programmer.  We had so little money to work with that I thought for sure the end result would use a rubber band.  But when we sat down with the programmer not only was he able to do the project he actually saved us $3,000 in expected software costs by putting together the feeds, mobile catalog, content enrichment with some JavaScript and the GoodReads API.  The end result is a very simple, easy to care for web-based app that keeps working as long as we keep feeding it the raw materials – staff book reviews.

Maximize your expertise

From the outset of this project, we engaged all levels of staff. This was critical to ensuring that whatever product we created would be supported throughout the organization, as well as vetted to ensure that we didn’t leave out any crucial elements.  One of those elements was the encoding that allowed FeedBuilder to pick up the items for Gimme.  A quick chat with the catalogers solved that problem – they created a series statement utilizing controlled vocabulary that would identify the item as belonging to a particular Gimme category and pasted the review into the MARC record. By adding Library staff review_[gimmeCategory] in the 830 field of each record and indexing it, not only were we able to create a constant flow of records for the Gimme feeds we were able to give all library staff easy access to these reviews when searching in the catalog.

The other process we had to create was a standardized way for people to submit reviews.  Here we called on the cataloging group, the folks who where posting to GoodReads, and our IT department to create a book review form on SharePoint.  The form itself was easy – staff at any level go to SharePoint (which functions as our intranet), type in their name, info about the book and their review and submit.   The catalogers and GoodReads group developed a process to “hand off” reviews that ensure that it gets encoded, posted in both the catalog and GoodReads,  and at all times is associated with the ISBN of the same edition so that everything seems to magically link together.  Having staff who don’t normally interact working together on the share outcome certainly fostered a sense of ownership and respect in the group.

Don’t just build it . . . make it fun

Once the Gimme engine design was complete, and we had the back end programming to make it work, we were ready to unleash Gimme out into the world. Our biggest concern was that Gimme would get lost amongst all of the other products and services the library offered. One evening while cooking a delicious shepherd’s pie, a light bulb went off over Ann’s head. Since we were using our library staff book recommendations to fuel Gimme, why not turn our Staff in marketing vehicles? The next day a call went out to staff asking whoever wished to help to come forward. The end result was 15 life-sized cardboard cut outs of library staffers, highlighting their personalities. Attached to each was a ‘speech bubble’ that directed customers to go to http://gimme.scottsdalelibrary.org to see what books that staff member recommended.

The next phase was to create floor decals to put in various spots in our five library branches, so as customers walked through the library they would gain exposure to Gimme. We created corresponding buttons for staff to wear, which helped spur conversions and questions from customers, “What is Gimme?” This marketing plan engaged all level of staff, which helped make the launch of Gimme a success.

One year later the Gimme Engine is continuing to grow with new categories and increasing stats.  Not only was the project a success but it by integrating the various workflows we’ve been able to make it, as well as doing fun reviews by staff, part of our culture.  We hope that our experience can help you in some way make your next project as successful as the Gimme Engine.

 

About Our Guest Authors:

Aimee Fifarek is the Library Technologies and Content Senior Manager for the Scottsdale Public Library in Arizona.  She has an MLIS and an MA in English from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and spent 6 years as the Systems Librarian at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge before going to Scottsdale.  Her professional interests include ebook platforms & development, self-publishing, and mobile technologies.  She can be found on Twitter @aimeelee.

Ann Porter is the Community Relations Coordinator at the Scottsdale Public Library. She has over 11 years of marketing, PR and media relations experience, working for organizations such as a major cosmetics company, an online retargeting agency that was recently purchased by Ebay and for a major NFL team.

 

Design 101: design elements, part 2 Typography

Previously I wrote about the importance of design in libraries, the design process and discussed three core elements of design: color, composition, and size. In this post, I’d like to focus on typography. Though not traditionally a design element, typography is more a tool or a language to use within your design to convey the message you are trying to achieve.

As mentioned previously, design elements work together to create a successful design that communicates to your audience if used well, and typography is no exception.

Type is rather complex and has a rich history. There are abundant options available with free and for-a-fee font files available. There are even resources available to have beautifully designed type on your website. Designers still create typefaces from scratch if needed, particularly for decorative uses. But it is perfectly acceptable to use already available font files and most designers do this. To create thoughtful designs using type well does not have to be difficult; with some basic knowledge, you can successfully choose the right type for the job and develop a successful design.

About fonts versus typefaces

As you work in design, it’s good practice to use the correct terminology. When most people talk about letterforms, they use the term, “fonts.” However what most people really mean is “typeface.” Fonts are really the format in which the typeface is available- librarians can understand this distinction easily. As Ellen Lupton states in Thinking With Type, “A typeface is the design of the letterforms; a font is the delivery mechanism…In digital systems, the typeface is the visual design, while the font is the software that allows you to install, access, and output the design.” Lupton’s book is a resource I highly recommend by the way. If you read nothing else about design and type, please read her book. I’ve provided the citation toward the end of the post.

Typography versus design

Typography within design should never be an afterthought. In fact, in many cases the typeface you choose can make or break a design. Every design should be a fluid creation, balancing between the various design elements and type. A designs are being created, it is best to bring the elements up together, tweaking and adjusting each piece as you go while also taking that step back to see the whole picture. As in writing, it can be more beneficial to keep the overall theme and outline in mind as you work on various details and sections of a piece; being too focused in on one small detail may be detrimental to the overall design piece.

Basics

There is a lot to learn and geek out over design and typography but rather than overwhelm, I’m going to give some good basics about type that will get you started right away. There are several main type classifications and the main three groupings are humanist, transitional, and modern or geometric.

Ellen Lupton defines each as the following: “Humanist letterforms are closely connected to calligraphy and the movement of the hand. Transitional and modern typefaces are more abstract and less organic.”

For the purpose of this post and for what you really need to know, I’m going to lump them into four categories based on the look of the typeface: Serif, Slab Serif, Sans Serif, and Decorative. There are examples of each one below.

Serif

Serif typefaces essentially have feet. Serif typefaces are essentially more organic and derive from various periods in history. You see these typefaces traditionally used in novels and blocks of text. Their use is not limited to that, however. There are many new Serif typefaces being developed that are contemporary based on their more historic predecessors.

Baskerville
Baskerville
Garamond
Garamond
Typographic Anatomy Lesson print: http://www.ligatureloopandstem.com/product/lesson-plan-print

Slab Serif
Slab Serif typefaces also have feet but their feet are blockier and slab-like, hence the name. These typefaces were developed for advertising and are more contemporary than traditional Serifs. These are used in a variety of ways but are popular for titles, posters, flyers, websites, and logos.

Museo Slab
Museo Slab
archer
Archer from the H&FJ foundry: http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_overview.php?productLineID=100033&path=head

Sans serif

As the name implies, these typefaces do not have Serifs or “feet”. They are generally more contemporary and less organic than Serif typefaces. These are very popular for text within websites, logos, and posters.

Helvetica
Helvetica
Gill Sans
Gill Sans
Keep Calm by K-Type: http://www.k-type.com/?p=2199

Decorative
Decorative or ornamental typefaces are self explanatory. These are typefaces that can stand alone as an image or illustration. They are highly decorative and should be used very carefully as they can overpower a design or clash more easily with other elements. Not all decorative typefaces are equal and many designers who are really good with decorative type do the lettering by hand and specialize in this area specifically. When done well and with skill, decorative typefaces are a true art form and when done poorly, they can quickly highlight an amateurish design. Decorative type is gaining in popularity as people, designers and non-designers alike, are embracing retro styles again and these typefaces are seeing a resurgence in use.

Rosewood STD
Rosewood STD
Decorative type from Louise Fili
Decorative type from Louise Fili: http://www.louisefili.com/

 

Bold, Italic, Underlined, Caps, and, and, and….

There is nothing wrong with using these elements. However it’s a good rule of thumb to use them sparingly and not all at once. By using them judiciously, they will have more impact and continue to maintain readability, which is key to design. Use them with caution.

Use

As you design and use type, be aware of what your type may be conveying to your audience and the medium in which you are designing in. Some typefaces are more successful on screen than others and some typefaces are specifically designed for print, screen, etc. A good resource for typefaces on the web is the 3rd edition of The Web Style Guide. There is a section specifically on typography that is helpful and gives insite into where typefaces are today.

Like all design elements and design in general, you are communicating with others. What is the type you are using saying? Does it fit with the message you want to send? Are you going for a modern and sleek look? Do you want to give your design a tactile/print feel or maybe you want it to be an homage to a specific period in design history? How does the typeface fit in with the rest of your design? What kind of mood might you be setting with the type and design elements you’ve put together? Type has a personality so be sure to choose a typeface that assists and hopefully conveys the message you want to give.

The end

At this point, you have the type basics and I hope that this gets you thinking more about the typefaces you see and perhaps use in your designs. I highly encourage reading Ellen Lupton’s book, Thinking With Type: a critical guide for designers, writers, editors, and students. She goes over a good deal of design basics and some design history and it’s a quick, enjoyable, informative read.

A couple of other good resources are: The FontFeed and The Elements of Typographic Style.

The best way to learn type and design is to just start. Things change so quickly and what was once right can become wrong or out of style very quickly. In design, you learn much more quickly by designing and making work. So pick a project and begin!

What is a Graphic Design Development Process?

Previously, I wrote about the value of design in libraries, and others, including Stephen Bell and Aaron Schmidt, have written and presented on the topic of design in libraries as well. Now I’d like to focus on and delve specifically into what graphic design process may entail. For librarians who design regularly, I hope this helps to articulate what you may be doing already or perhaps add a bit to your tools and tips. For those that don’t design, I hope that this might give you insight into a process that is more complex than it may seem and that you might give designing a try yourself. For some ideas, try any of these are great library design projects: signs, webpages, posters, flyers, bookmarks, banners, etc.

What Is It Like to Design?

People might wonder why design needs to be a process. The very basic process of design, like many processes, is to solve a problem and then create a solution. Jason Fried, founder of 37signals and co-author of Rework, tweeted recently, “Your first design may be the best, but you won’t know until you can’t find a better one.” He later added this image from The Intercom blog as an illustration to make this important point. Striving for an elegant or best solution is something librarians and designers have in common. Librarians often share best practices and examining this process may not only assist us in terms of design, but perhaps we can apply these concepts to other areas of librarianship as we create programs, outreach, marketing, and more.

Design is a process.
Designers work hard to develop a successful design and it doesn’t always come easy. Here are some of the basic steps designers take in the development phase of their work. Every designer is a bit different, and not all designers follow the exact same process. However, this is a pretty good foundation for beginner designers and once you get good, you can incorporate or modify pieces of the process to make it work for you and the project at hand. Design is subjective and there are few hard and fast rules to follow, however, in future posts I’ll be talking more about design elements and details to help you create stronger designs that will speak to your users.

Design has constraints.
Before you start laying things out and jumping into a design, you want to understand what the “specs”  or specifications are. These are the details of the final piece you need up front before you begin any design. For example, is the piece going to be printed or is it an online piece? What’s the budget? Is it black and white, color, how many colors? What size? If printed, what paper will it be printed on? Will color bleed to the edge or is there a border? Is there folding or cutting involved?

All of these considerations are going to be the rules you must work under. But most designers like to think of them as challenges; many times if the specs aren’t too restrictive they can actually empower the designer to drive harder to make it more creative. You really don’t want to start designing before you get this all worked out because once you’ve jumped in it can mean starting over if a critical spec is missed. If you have designed for a set of specs and then try to modify it to fit all new specs later, it almost always compromises the strength of the design to work this way. Better to know those specs up front.

Design requires an open mind.
Sketch like crazy. You may think you have the best, most original idea ever once you get your assignment or have your specs, but please do yourself a huge favor and sketch some ideas out first. Do at least a page of sketches if not much more. Take notes, do some research on the topic, do word associations and mind maps and draw stick figures and doodle. Keep an open mind to new possibilities. Observe the world around you, daydream, and collect inspiration. You might still stick with that first idea but chances are you come up with something even better and usually more original if you push yourself to think in new ways and explore.

Design step by step.
Depending on the complexity of the piece, whether it’s print or web, I might do more or less of each step below. If you’re designing or reworking a website, this is a good method to get a powerful, thoughtful design. And of course, you can go back and iterate based on feedback given, changes to the design that impact design elements. If the design structure is strong, changes should be fairly small.

Basic Design Development Process:

1. research the topic, take notes, ask questions, doodle, jot down ideas, simmer 

2. series of thumbnail sketches
This is an extension of step 1. Do as many as you can muster…do it until you are sick of it. Here is a great presentation I recently found on sketching.

3. build wireframe
Stay abstract/block in composition. This is going to be larger than a thumbnail but try to keep it free from detail.

4. sketch comps
Take steps 2 and 3 and flesh out 3 comps. These should not be final but should follow specs and be close to finished in terms of look and feel for the major design components. You may use lorum ipsum text if you wish. This technique helps to keep people from giving feedback about the content over the design. Of course there are times the content may absolutely need to be there but use your own discretion and know that this is an option and may help in moving forward.

5. finalize comps
Usually 3 choices are offered to a client, but if you are your own client obviously just do your favorite.
All of this is separate from any CSS, html, javascript, etc. Mock it up using Photoshop and/or Illustrator (or a similar program of your choice). The point is to focus on the design apart from laying down code. “Form Follows Function” really rings true. It isn’t an either/or statement. The product must work first and foremost and the design will support, enhance, and make it work better. If it doesn’t work, no amount of gorgeous design will change something that is badly broken.

TaDa, right?
The design is done, let’s celebrate!

Well, not exactly. This process is merely just one phase of a much larger process that includes steps including: initially meeting the client, negotiating a contract, presenting your designs, more testing and usability, iterative design adjustments, possibly working with developers or print houses, etc. Design is a process that requires study, skills, schooling, and knowledge like many fields. I’ll be talking about more design topics in the future, so what is not covered here I’ll try and cover next time. Luckily, I gathered some great…

Design resources to get you started:

This is not a comprehensive list by any means but highlights of a few resources to get you thinking about design.

  • Non-Designer’s Design Book: One of the best beginner design books out there (overlook the cover- it really is a great book!).
  • Smashing Magazine: Really good stuff on this website- including freebies, like decent icons and vector artwork. Covers typography, color, graphic design, etc.
  • a list apart: another great site that delves into all kinds of topics but has great stuff on graphic design, UI design, typography, illustrations. etc.
  • Fast Company Design: relevant design articles and examples from industry.
  • IDEO: design thinking, great high level design examples- check out their portfolio in selected works.
  • Thinking With Type: title says it all- learn about the fine art and science of typefaces. You will never look at design and type the same way again.
  • Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works: another must on typography
  • Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: seriously. even if you think you can’t draw. try it. anyone can draw, truly. Drawing helps you think in new and creative ways- it will help you be more creative and help in problem solving anything. Even those small doodles are valuable.

Pick. your. favorite. see above. do it.

Enjoy and thanks again!

Design in Libraries


photo by kvanhorn on flickr some rights reserved

What is the importance of design in libraries?

Libraries have users, and those users go through an experience, whether they walk through the doors and into the building or use the library’s online website and resources.

Why should we care?

  • Design can give users a good experience or a bad one.

Think about when you go to a store. Any store. The experience you have can be improved by design, or hindered by design. For example, if you go to a store in person and you are trying to find a particular item- signs have the potential to help you find that item. But what if you had too many signs? Or what if those signs are unreadable?

Think about when you are at a restaurant. You certainly want to have an enjoyable dining experience. From the time you walk through the door to the time you leave, everything you encounter and experience has an impact on you. When you sit down to the table and open the menu, you want to be able to easily read the menu items. Have you ever been to a restaurant where it was hard to decide on what to order because the menu was difficult to read? This seems to be a common occurrence, yet a simple well thought out menu can change that experience entirely. And great design can even give people an emotional experience that they remember deeply. Think about a time when you went to a restaurant and had a great experience; think about what details made that experience great.

  • Now take these concepts and redirect them to libraries.

When a user walks into the door of the library, what is their experience? Put yourself in the users shoes. Are signs unfriendly or hard to read? Is it difficult to find what they might be looking for? Think of design as a way of providing service to users. Good design takes training and study, however, within a relatively small timeframe, anyone can understand design basics and fundamentals to create decent design that communicates. Librarians are good at organizing things and within design lies organization. Designing is simply organization and choices about elements such as typography, composition, contrast, and color to name a few.

  • Design is also about restraint; what you don’t do.

This is an important distinction because often people get excited when they explore elements of design and want to put everything they love all into one design. Often this doesn’t work very well and it comes back to making good choices and sometimes leaving out an element you really love but doesn’t work in the overall design you are building. It’s okay though- designers collect like librarians do and we just save that good stuff for another design that it will really work well in. Keeping a little library and saving elements and inspirations are part of being a good designer. Whether online or in paper- both practices are good to get into. The tool Pinterest serves this purpose well but any tool or method for collecting design elements and inspiration is good practice. When you are looking for ideas- don’t forget to go to that tool to give you new ideas or to help get you thinking in new ways.

  • Good design in libraries leads to a quality user experience.

This concept of design can extend to all kinds of user experiences in the library, including layout of a room, the library’s web presence, the building’s architecture, furniture choices, marketing materials, and more. But let’s start simple- start in your library and examine what you have for signs. Ask this: what does this sign communicate to our user? How does it look and feel to you? What if this sign were in a store where you were making a purchase, how would it communicate in that scenario? Ask users what they think of your signs as well. Developing an understanding of what works and what doesn’t, will only lead to better design and thus better user experience.

 

Hot Topic: Infographics

Do you know what an infographic is? Infographics are visual representation of facts, tutorials, or other data-centered information that inform while staying focused on great design.

Here’s an example of one about the history of the iPad:

iPad infographic
iPad infographic via http://killerinfographics.submitinfographics.com/

This infographic takes a whole mess of data and makes it visually interesting and easy to digest.

So, what do infographics have to do with libraries? Libraries have tons of data- both informational and instructional data ranging from topics like local history facts to how to do research. Take a look at this Google infographic recently posted on the HackCollege site: http://www.hackcollege.com/blog/2011/11/23/infographic-get-more-out-of-google.html

A snippet:

Google Infographic
Google infographic via http://www.hackcollege.com/

This image highlights several complex research skills while explaining the thought process behind it in one easy to understand sentence, while being attractive and compelling to look at. What’s better than that?

Great examples of infographics can be found across the web. Wired magazine, for one, often uses them and Holy Kaw!, Guy Kawasaki’s website (http://holykaw.alltop.com) also highlights great infographics from other sites. Another great site to see examples of different types of infographics is http://killerinfographics.submitinfographics.com/.

The importance of infographics and other great visualizations of data (see Warby Parker’s 2011 Annual Report for the best annual report ever: http://www.warbyparker.com/annual-report-2011) to libraries is obvious. People respond to great design, and great design makes information accessible and inviting. It is in our best interests to strive for great design in all that we do, to make libraries accessible and inviting.

Recently, Sophie Brookover, New Jersey librarian, posted in the ALA Think Tank Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/groups/ALAthinkTANK/) about starting a group of librarians learning to create infographics, much like the Code Year project. This idea is very much in the early stages, but keep an eye on it or get involved- good things are sure to come.