Design Archives - What Does This Mean to Me, Laura?

Does your library have a font problem?

While discussing the aesthetics of a library program promotion, my supervisor made this comment: “Their graphic designer never met a font they didn’t like.” In other words, there were too many fonts being used in one campaign. There wasn’t a…

Design

4 rules to make your promotional graphics a lot better

Do you create promotional graphics for your library’s website or social media? Yes, design can be subjective, but there are definitely guidelines that should be considered. After all, you’re not doing this for the sake of creating art: you’re trying…

Design

Are you designing for something that isn’t there anymore?

When I started doing web stuff in the 1990’s, I remember it being very much a “Wild West” kind of realm, with few hard and fast guidelines or rules (which is why sites made with GeoCities could get away with looking…

Carousels: time to go

Carousels have almost become ubiquitous. I am frequently asked about them when I start designing a site for a library. I often. now, make it clear that these don’t represent a good design choice. Yes, they’re convenient. They seemingly solve…

3 truths about your library’s website

I create websites for public libraries. I’ve been doing that for more than 15 years. In that time, I’ve learned a few things, especially in my current job, where I work on sites for multiple libraries. I’ve learned some hard…

Design

Challenges

I was recently asked to talk to a SLIS class for the University of Illinois, concerning what I do and what real-world advice I might care to impart to a class full of potential web librarians and developers. One of…

Design

Some lines about logos

In my job, I work with a lot of library logos. Especially because, when possible , I design around the logo. I don’t like to just create a template and stick a logo in it. I like the rest of…

Is it theft? Yeah, it is.

Recently, I had the unpleasant experience of discovering that one of my custom graphics was appearing, without permission, on a library’s website. It appeared that the library had simply copied the graphic from the original site for which it was…

Design

Website work starts with education

“Though art may be subjective, Web design is not. In Web design, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach layout, navigation, copy, white space, and other critical website components.”—Andrew Follett A lot of what I do…