Opinion BY Armin

Public School Library is all Buzz and no Bees

Sorry for the late start this morning. My two girls were up at 5:30 am (which is prime Brand New writing time) and then I had to play some early morning basketball. But speaking about kids… Today we are going super local and small because super local and small clients need super design too. Public School 9 (PS9) and Middle School 571 (MS571) in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn recently opened the doors to their new library (where there was none before) after being spearheaded by parents of the school’s kids. They nicknamed the library the Book Hive, with the furniture inspired by bee hives with cute reading benches in hexagon shapes. Brooklyn-based The Rich Greco created the identity for the library. When the Book Hive opened in November of last year, the school had no budget for a librarian so it remained closed and to add insult to injury the New York City Department of Education is planning to close MS571 and place a charter school in their place. So, for the kids, here is a pretty identity (where there was none before).

The library, before and after.

The library, during construction.

News story about the Book Hive and its lack of librarian.

The logo is nice and simple and the translation of “book hive” into the icon is very well realized. The typography suffers a bit of readability and I personally would have gone for something a little bolder to give it a more even texture. As a pattern, the icon works really great and the color has just the right amount of honey-ness without being overly cute.

Somebody get these kids a librarian.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners