A Splash of color,
a fun summer for young readers
The Auburn Hills Public Library liked the colorful art focused direction of the official Summer Reading 2025 theme, but desired a unique look for their library. Unlike other libraries I work with, AHPL has a desiner & community relations manager on staff. So, the goal for this project was to establish a visual direction, create custom key art, design a handful of the marketing materials, and put together a Summer Reading brand kit I could hand off to their team to make the rest of Summer Reading materials in house.
For inspiration, the youth librarians wanted something akin to 'The Day the Crayons Quit' with fun art supply characters, but with an overall cleaner look. For kids, these character would embody creativity, the joy of reading & creating art, and provide a welcoming persona iniviting children to the library.
I worked with the library's community relations manager to first brainstorm the main theme 'Read, Imagine, Create' as our starting point. Building on that I sketched ideas for the key art. Upon establishing the key art I got to work expanding the kit with: standing banners, stickers, coloring sheets, bookmarks, the Summer T-Shirt, and an assortment of brand assets that they could use in-house to create any marketing materials they may need throughout the Summer. The bold colors and paint splashes were designed to act as visual tools the in-house team could apply to any marketing along with the individual characters to unify all their Summer Reading materials.
