I'm thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of a new project close to my heart: a library merchandise store supporting the FRIENDS group (Friends of the Library)! As a passionate product designer with experience creating consumer products, I jumped at the chance to combine my design skills with my love for libraries and reading.
I designed Texas-Library-Book-themed merchandise appealing to readers of all ages. And I might be a bit biased, but I think they're pretty fun and funny (hopefully you will too!)
My personal favorite designs are the "Favorite word series" and "The Tropes", which I have a couple more to be added.

If you'd like to check out the store for yourself..... it's available at hcpl.creator-spring.com
and I have a special CODE " ILOVEHCPL"  for 25% off if you'd like to pick something up.

I've just recently returned for a week or so in Paris, it was my first time in France and after the past 2 years of road trips or short trips to within the United States, I was so ready to go abroad. The city reminded me so much of Shanghai and of Buenos Aires that it felt very much like home even though it was obviously distinct.  I love the exploration of being in new places  and I spent each day just walking around the city and stumbling into wonderful places.  One day, I clocked 15 miles walked and in between locales, we spent a lot of time watching the locals do their thing! What stood out to me was not just the sights, but loads of observations on how they've designed the city, how the people interact and how the ads and ways of communication differ. That's A LOT of what I'm bringing back and still thinking about. I was fortunate to travel internationally early on in life and usually try to travel out of the country every couple of years ( more often if possible!!) and I believe it's got a lot to do with my perspective, approach to problem solving, how I  work with people and maybe even my creativity. Seeing how people's lives are so different and learning about their values is so important, it builds empathy and allows insight to motivations which in turn make me a better communicator. 

Although I can not share my private Instagram I can assure you that the photos there are not of a professional quality, and that's okay because that's not what I'm doing there...However, I do take A LOT of professional photography for work because it's the base for all our communications strategy. Having strong original professional photography that illustrates the core brand themes is so important to businesses that I would say it's essential for all businesses to audit and produce their own evergreen set of photographs. I love a good casual spur of the moment photoshoot ( just ask my daughter @babysilverelle) but it's just not the same when you're operating a business. 

A good photo is easy to snap but an excellent photo that visually depicts your product or service needs to be produced. I can't stress enough the importance of strong photography in a online presence, and at some point your phone will simply be not enough, and you'll need to get someone who can do the art direction or styling and editing because that's really where the difference is for businesses. The storytelling is created at the shoot.

Because one of my first jobs was art directing for an apparel manufacturer, I saw first hand how important product photography is, but as I moved on to different industries, it was a common thread across many marketing offices to request or coordinate original photography for print or web collateral. For work I usually don't do any photography unless I have the campaign already in mind, coordinated models and props, image releases and a shot list. It is a production- and the images that are eventually published usually all reinforce one of the brand theme we've set earlier but can be used across all marketing collateral. 

I'll share with you some photos that I am pretty happy with below. these were not used in any campaign but are edited and produced by me.

What's pictured here is a sticker book I made of myself, for my senior art show self promotion. Because most of us deal with some sort of imposter syndrome, this was my attempt to hedge some of those feelings, the stickers are all filled with CAN-DO phrases with fun puns and images of me.

These were self produced, designed and printed using a 4 color offset printer and then hand cut. And I sent them out with my resume or brought them along to interviews, and stuck them around the city. It must of worked because I'd gotten job offers and decided to take the job that offered my the most creative freedom at the time.

This leads me to a recent project to create my custom stickers for patrons to decorate their library card or water bottle, or whatever. We designed and produced three sheets of waterproof stickers about the library, but not so directly about the library that they weren't fun or couldn't be used by non-library users. Each sheet was designed especially for each audience the library serves. The designs were a collaboration between myself and the many talented librarians in our system and part of our the library's 100 year celebration. 

This project was one of those things that came about when thinking of cool things to mix together...such as audiobooks and the car. The idea is that it's a new book scented air freshener to be used while the driver is in the car and listening to an audiobook but this way they don't miss the things traditionally thought of when "reading" a book because the smell of pages and glue will permeate throughout the car to create a "reading" experience for the audiobook listener.

I researched and created the scent, tested with people to get feedback on this unique smell and found a manufacturer that would work with us to produce the item, and had the custom sample created with a "Easy Rider" or in our case..." Easy Reading" graphic, the header card is where all the info about the audiobooks and other e-Media is.

In 2021 we updated the graphic and packaging to reflect stronger on the freshness of the books we offer and give a little uplifting messaging to drivers. This time it wasn't just easy reading, it was a little more about the fresh or new books that our librarians were adding to our digital collection.

This item is to be given away at our many outreach events throughout the year, and is a conversation starter about the digital media collection for our outreach staff and the public. It usually brings out an expression of surprise with people and it triggers an psychological attachment of delight with the library. We want to intrigue you enough for you to return to the library and explore and this little object does just that.

These types of unexpected loot or merchandise used in our outreach events was one of the contributing branding elements that helped our library system achieve 4 million checkouts last year of our digital collection, making our library one of the top 10 in the United States.

I had the opportunity to work on this new library card design for the "Enhanced Library Card", which could act as a secondary ID for those who lack the documentation or requirements for other types of government ID. It's basically a library card but it's got more stuff displayed on the front so you can use it to get your prescription medicine or as an address card for a kid. 

What you don't see in the daylight image are the many security features I've embedded into the card. We worked with a special vendor to produce these cards so that they can be quickly printed onsite after verifying information , but since we really wanted to validate these cards and ensure that not just anyone ( although its available to almost anyone with sufficient documentation) could get one or fake a card, we added a UV layer of design that I designed to have both an intricate pattern and the micro text that is often used in other security cards. The UV layer is only visible under UV light and features our county seal, bluebonnets, our service icons, and our Knowledge logo from the regular full service card.

The visible background of the enhanced card recalls elements and the brand palette of the main Knowledge Card which I also designed in 2018. Being able to design something like the library cards, which MILLIONS (approximately 2.7) of people in our area have, is something I'm pretty proud of! 

As most elder millennials, I grew up on the web in high school...it started out with AIM ( AOL's Instant Messenger) and then to a web design class my senior year and eventually evolved to my high school boyfriend and I making our own blog design service to our other online friends on Blogger and LiveJournal (I actually just got an 18 year anniversary email from my secret LiveJournal, and read a couple of my last entries and it's completely cringe). 

I've had plenty of real, professional web design experience since then but I like to think of those early days as to when my interest and passion for website publishing truly began.

The current site I'm responsible for is the library's website and it's definitely the largest site I've managed and helped bring to life. It's been live for about 3 years, we spent about 1.5 year in the background on development and content. But as pretty and as functional as she is...we're about to start the project again on a new platform. My team was the most hands on with the project, outside of our IT management, and were responsible for content migration and content publishing, and we had strong oversight over the design and pushed for many of the UX and UI functions to be developed. 

While it didn't ever fully meet our UI or content management expectations, she's been a good workhorse for the past few years. You'd never know behind the drapes that she's a monster on the backend and with about 100 daily users and thousands of user accounts, she's done the best as she can with what we've been given.

One thing I always wished the developers were able to provide was additional views for content blocks to display catalog items ( or services) on pages that were parallel to that content type. 

I had the recent pleasure of presenting in person with my colleagues at the 2022 Texas Library Conference in Fort Worth. I presented last year in the virtual conference but it's such a different experience speaking to a room, and I'm happy to of had the chance to share how my team created our own content network to empower our library branches and have a perpetual stream of digital content to share. 

In addition to sharing how we set up our network, I also shared examples of the content cycle workflow my team follows to help manage, serialize and optimize the materials they are already creating and make it more valuable. 

Creating the presentation, is what sparked me to redesign my domain and put the blog back together. I've been a marketer for so long that many of my processes are internalized and I often don't mention the small but key steps to a workflow, so it's a hope for this blog to jot down some of reasoning behind my work and to track these ideas for future trainings. 

Part of my work at the library is to coordinate visuals and messaging at high press events or any new campaigns. I tend to approach each new campaign as a product and manage the brand, marketing and content accordingly. When the library decided to participate in the first PRIDE parade since the pandemic started, we knew the event was going to be large and get lots of visibility- which is when I was brought in to coordinate the visuals and help bring to life the theme that was decided upon ( Challenged LGBTQ books) for the parade, in addition to help produce the programming accompanying the celebration and market the whole event.

For the parade, we have a lot of very creatively talented people in our organization so it was just a matter of coordinating the fabrication of the multiple book covers in a consistent way and communicating why we were marching in the parade with this costume. We produced 20 book covers by painting and collage and created sandwich boards for the marchers to wear.

To accompany the parade and as part of the celebration, we also produced a podcast episode in collaboration with 2 other podcasts, and then held an in-person event at Rice University that was also streamed online. We also created a curation of more books in our digital catalog, available via QR code on the van and on a new webpage that incorporates all the PRIDE content within an ongoing campaign.  

Overall, I'm pretty proud of this project and the content/outcomes it's produced. We were well represented at the festival and parade, the events were well attended and the visual content re-enforces all our organizational missions.