Booktopia
Client: Cabra Library
Booktopia was colour-coded wayfinding system that uses cartoon characters to help children to navigate in Cabra library, through the themes of Barbara Knezevic's exhibition. With Booktopia, my team and I wanted to create a sense of excitement for the children to use their own imagination and initiative, to embrace problem-solving and critical thinking skills. From here, we came up with 4 cartoon characters that will be a good way to connect and communicate with children and help them to learn and understand the library in an engaging way.
This project was developed as part of my master's degree in Graphic Design Practice in TU Dublin.
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Creative Direction: Amy O'carroll / Claudiu Potlog / Caoimhe Mcdonnell
Illustration: José Clécio
The colours would have to stand out within the environment of the library and they also had to be distinctive enough from each other to represent the four separate themes.
Themes were created based on the books ordered for the exhibition. We ended up with 4 themes: Faith, Geology, Fiction & Art. With those themes, we created a story, a fantasy world that the children could learn through their own imagination and initiative using the library resources.
Our solution is to use these themes of the books from the library to connect the children's learning to art and Barbara’s Knezevic Exhibition. It sets out to use library resources to extend the life of the exhibition through collection, discovery and interaction.
Bookmark
Front/
As our design solution has 4 themes, each theme will have its own bookmark with a small text stimulating children to follow the dots and find the thematic books.
Back/
Where there is 3 spaces where the children can assemble their stickers and can keep a record of their progression of reading. We decided on having only 3 stickers per bookmark, because we want to maintain children excited to keep reading and collecting the bookmarks and stickers.
We used colour coding as a way to help the children navigate the space. From our research, we found this approach was a good way to connect the library space and the exhibition space in a fun and engaging way.
We chose colours that were playful and would grab the kids attention and they are ideal for kids. Bright, happy colours that stimulate emotions and can assist in the development of child imagination. For the colour, we had to use a contrast with the dark blue lino in the library to make the wayfinding to be effective.
The information on the podium was chosen based on best practice research on how kids interact with colours, text, and characters in order to create that emotional and excitement between the kids and the podium. From our best practice research we concluded that characters help create a better connection and relationship between the children and our solution. The characters speak for themselves and are welcoming the kids into the library. They have their own personality and they represent each theme of the books that we want them to engage with.
We decided to have our bookmarks at the low level so that it will be easily accessible for the kids, as well we choose the text "take one" to help them quickly understand what they have to do.
The Book dividers are made of acrylic, features of each character of side profile combined with the colour will help the child to identify the connection to the theme they are looking for.
The stickers will come on sheets to make it as easy as possible to match the stickers with the bookmark. They will be separated by colour and character so the librarians will be able to easily identify what stickers the childs missing.
Librarian instructions: When we were considering this process and how it would function we also had to make it as easy as possible for the librarians to understand and implement it. We made a set of instructions that summarized the aim, what the children will be doing and then we also included information of how things such as the stickers, bookmarks and Book dividers worked. This is just something that can be kept on the desk so everyone understands what's how to take part.
Our research demonstrates that design was needed to address the challenge and that our design solution was appropriate and effective in relation to the clients brief. We researched different solutions and possibilities to make sure our final solutions embrace all our client needs.
The strengths of this process were that all team members had different abilities which contributed to the final solution, the process was well researched and documented in order to obtain the best outcome.
The shortcomings of this process were the changes that we all have to deal with during the pandemic, changing all our routines overnight was the real challenge and in the end, with will and determination, we were able to adapt and pull together the best outcome for our client. That proved to be our strength, in the end, the power of adapting to any situation in order to achieve the best result for our client no matter what.
