Category: Design

The design process, or examples of design.

iStop

Apple refurbished the North/Clybourn stop of the red line in Chicago and it looks much nicer than it did before. It also opens up to a plaza at which an Apple store sits on the other side. Convenient, that!

Before:

After:

I haven’t been to the stop yet but imagine that it’s lovely. A win/win for the citizens of Chicago and Apple or corporate co-opting of the public? I don’t know. It makes me uncomfortable. Would it feel even creepier if the corporation involved was one that people loved to hate, like Walmart or McDonald’s? Oh wait, some people do love to hate Apple.

Every day people are voting for Apple (and Microsoft and whatever else) with their dollars. It would be easy to just wish that they’d cast their some of their votes for public services but that’s asking a lot. Too much. Libraries need to first be worth voting for and then demonstrate that they’re worth voting for. The real rub is that it would be easier for us to do this if we had more money in the first place, right?

Right. But we also know that there are plenty of things we can do to endear our libraries to the communities they serve.

Bike Lending at UConn Library

UConn plans a bike-sharing test program in the next few months, in which anyone with a current UConn identification could borrow one of 20 bicycles at the Homer Babbidge Library.

The Undergraduate Student Government purchased the bikes. If the pilot program is successful, more bicycles will be purchased.

I wonder if this was a library idea supported by the student government or if the student government approached the library. Either way, I’m into it.

[via Jen Waller]

Other bike related stuff here at Walking Paper:
– Reading Rickshaw +
– P+ Bike System
– Libraries can Learn from Rivendell Bicycle Works

A Lesson via Design Theft

Rapha is a London based cycling apparel company that makes super nice gear. They really seem to be committed to quality and their website is quite nice.

Primal Wear makes cycling apparel that is stylistically the opposite of Rapha. I don’t know if their stuff if nice to wear or not. Regardless, they’ve chosen to fully rip off Rapha’s website. Shamelessly.

What’s most interesting about this to me are the differences beyond the two homepages. The Primal Wear site is still decent looking but lacks the great narrative focused photographs and text that Rapha uses to draw people in.

Take a look at the pages at the individual item level.

Rapha’s visual design has clearly been pilfered but upon closer inspection the difficult stuff – the overall strategy and engaging content – can’t as easily be nicked.

The lesson here for libraries? Your homepage is only so important. And the visual design of your site is important, but if you can’t easily improve it you can always make gains by improving what the visual design is there to support: the content.

Solution Based Organization

Wouldn’t this be a compelling way to organize some health related books? Might have to be sensitive about the questions posted, however.

The Help Remedies website has some nice things going on too*, including this “about” info.

Help Remedies was created to make solving simple health issues simple. We find the best solution there is, and take away everything else. By stripping away some of the complexity and fear mongering of the health industry, we hope to make medicine friendlier and more accessible, and in doing so empower people to make their own health decisions.

We think a little help, honesty and kindness will go a long way.

*The front page of the site is cute, but at first I thought clicking on the items was going to lead me to product info.

Content Strategy & Writing for the Web

I’m in the middle of digging though a content audit of a large library website and the more I do them the more convinced I am of their utility. Assessing every page (and other pieces of content) on a website is a granular task that can expose some big problems force people to think about the not only the purpose of a website, but the whole organization. Super great stuff for libraries to be thinking about.

Here’s a PDF of my slides for a presentation I gave at Internet Librarian last month: Content Strategy & Writing for the Web. Take from it what you can, and with any luck I’ll be able to give the topic the treatment it deserves with a proper post here in December.

Content Strategy & Writing for the Web

I’m in the middle of digging though a content audit of a large library website and the more I do them the more convinced I am of their utility. Assessing every page (and other pieces of content) on a website is a granular task that can expose some big problems force people to think about the not only the purpose of a website, but the whole organization. Super great stuff for libraries to be thinking about.

Here’s a PDF of my slides for a presentation I gave at Internet Librarian last month: Content Strategy & Writing for the Web. Take from it what you can, and with any luck I’ll be able to give the topic the treatment it deserves with a proper post here in December.

Visual Design Libraries Should Be Proud Of

In response to my post beautiful > ugly Suzanne Chapman just shared some examples of nice looking graphic design from the University of Michigan Library.

See her post and the MLibrary Branding & Marketing Materials set on flickr for more.

This got me thinking about two other things I’ve seen recently. The first is a collection of library cards from the Edmonton Public Library (via John Blyberg’s Twitter feed).



They also have an associated sticker contest. I think I have a pretty big crush on this library.

Lastly, the District of Columbia Public Library has two new library card designs. One of them is a promotion for the forthcoming second version of the DCPL iPhone app.

I really like the idea of a library putting out collectable, limited edition library cards that people can trade in their old cards for.