The Public Library Has Ruined Me
Five Years at the Ann Arbor District Library
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I write a lot about book design, but my day job is at a library. “Day job” implies it is what I do to pay the bills while my more fulfilling work is elsewhere, but it is, in fact, an integral part of my creative practice.
Once it becomes your job to “sell” the library and its services, it is difficult to do anything else. I have always been prone to search for deep meaning in my work,1 but sometimes I wonder if my job as a graphic designer at the Ann Arbor District Library has ruined me for conventional, for-profit employment.2
This month marks five years in my role at the library. To celebrate, I thought I might tell you a little bit about what I do.
Why I Get to Do What I Do
What does a graphic designer at a public library do? It depends on the library. Most libraries, I would guess, do not have “graphic designers.” They have librarians, marketing managers, interns, and other people stretched too thin who do graphic design with what tools they have available to them. I’m lucky. My library is a district library—meaning it is autonomous and does not answer to a governing municipal authority—and for its city’s size, has an extremely healthy budget. For the 2022-2023 fiscal year, AADL had nearly $20 million in revenue. Approximately 96% of that revenue comes from Ann Arbor, Michigan, property taxes, a city whose average home price was reportedly over $683,000 in April of last year. And, if that weren’t enough:
In 1996, [Ann Arbor] voters approved a dedicated, perpetual millage to fund the establishment and operation of an independent district library, newly separate from the Ann Arbor public school system.3 (Emphasis mine.)
To put it bluntly: Ann Arbor is wealthy, and it loves its library.4
Why does this matter? I think it’s important context. This funding enables the ability to hire graphic designers like me in the first place—three, in AADL’s case—and also means that the library can serve its patrons via hundreds of services and free events each year that I, in part, help promote.
So what do I do?
Finances aside, the library’s true wealth is in its people and their ideas. One of my favorite things about working for AADL is that every year, I am asked to work on a project I never would have expected to come across my desk.
This year, I have:
Sourced an image and coordinated the creation of a life-sized Taylor Swift cutout for an album release event
Designed and printed giant cake mockups to hang in the youth department
Created album artwork for an original composition, based on a Lyndon B. Johnson commencement speech, for an Archives project celebrating Ann Arbor’s bicentennial
Designed a logo for a game called Scatterlog based on The New York Times’ Connections
Designed a souvenir poster for an after-hours ska band concert
Other years and other projects have involved illustrating a game show set for puppets, designing an award-winning coffee table book about the history of student cinema groups, and a movie poster … for puppets. There was a lot of puppet-based graphic design happening for a while there. But it’s not always so unexpected.
Event promotion
One of the more routine parts of my job is the design of digital graphics for event promotion. Each month, our team’s communications specialist adds a series of upcoming events to our Design Projects Airtable base and we designers claim and design simple graphics for the library website, newsletter, and various social media platforms.
AADL also publishes two event brochures each month for adults and kids, respectively. We rotate these design assignments based on bandwidth and schedule.
Festivals
The library also hosts an increasingly large number of bigger events each year that we call “festivals” or “expos.” These festivals include:
One designer leads the visual charge for each of these events. Sometimes we create the artwork, other times we commission it from a freelancer. From that artwork, we create posters, stickers, and bookmarks, in addition to digital graphics and wayfinding signage for the day of the event.
Fifth Avenue Press
The Ann Arbor District Library created a publishing imprint called Fifth Avenue Press in 2017. Based on a submissions process, the press—made up of interdepartmental staff—publishes books each year exclusively by authors in Washtenaw County (or books about the area). Fifth Ave provides editing and design services for no cost, leaving the cost of printing—and all of the profits—to the author. In return, the library hosts a PDF copy of the book in its digital catalog for library patrons to download with their library card.
The Summer Game
By far the biggest thing that AADL does every year is the Summer Game. How does one describe The Summer Game? If a standard library summer reading program were a Power Ranger, The Summer Game would be a Megazord.5
At its heart is a reading program, but the Game is also a massive scavenger hunt for codes throughout the libraries, businesses, lawns, and parks of Ann Arbor as well as AADL’s website. Players earn digital badges by completing riddle-like searches through the library’s online catalog. At the end of the summer, points can be redeemed for prizes like t-shirts, stuffies, and archives calendars. (We design those too!)
Each year, we hire an artist to create artwork for the Summer Game that we designers use to create a host of promotional materials from bookmarks to banners that hang outside the library’s five locations.
It’s a huge undertaking that I am not describing—and maybe can’t describe—adequately. We’re already planning Summer Game 2025.
Five Years at the Library
This is, in broad swaths and in collaboration, what I work on for the library. And yet, there are still things I have left out! Like the podcast covers. Or the YouTube thumbnails. The variety of projects is stunning, and is why I am able to continue to grow and challenge myself after five years of this work.
I jokingly say the library has ruined me, but it is less of a joke than you might think. Sure, sometimes I daydream about making boatloads of cash being a brand designer or UX designer or whatever else the world comes up with, but how can I use graphic design to make someone else money, or advertise some bullshit, after getting to use it to promote one of the country’s greatest public institutions? I love libraries and it is a privilege to work for one so beloved when so many are threatened today.
It’s not perfect, of course. No job is. The funding that makes my job so enjoyable is in direct correlation to why it’s hard to actually live in the city I serve. I can’t stare that irony in the face for too long. The pay is good for a library, but not necessarily for Ann Arbor. There’s not too much in the way of upward mobility. And of course, it’s a large, public organization, so there are politics to navigate and decisions I don’t understand or agree with.6
But I love this job dearly. When I have told friends where I work, more than one has remarked on how it makes perfect sense for me.
The public library has ruined me. But that’s alright with me—I’m a library person. Are you?
Until next time,
—Nathaniel
Sucker.
Freelance book design is a quasi-exception: Some of the books I design are for-profit projects. Many are not. But come on, it’s books.
Source: AADL Strategic Plan 2016-2019
It’s worth noting that several staff members, including myself, live outside of the city.
The giant robot the Power Rangers combine to make. Weird analogy, I know, but it’s what came to mind so I ran with it.
Like, for instance, being the sole library in Washtenaw County to not participate in a reciprocal borrowing system.
Nathaniel, they are so lucky to have a passionate, talented creative like you!
The town I live in (Chapel Hill, NC) is often compared with Ann Arbor. We, too, LOVE our library. I'm now the parent of a Librarian--my son--who used to stagger out of the library with as many books as a 10 year-old could possibly carry.
I hope your creativity continues to flourish--you are ruined in the best possible way!
Thanks for sharing your experiences in the public arena. I'm lucky to in a profession which is relatively well paid for the neighborhood but aside from compensation your story totally mirrors my experience since joining the government in 2018.
One thing I really appreciate is that you start by acknowledging the funding structure. I have a similar anecdote—a few weeks ago, my DMV project won a design award and a buddy called to congratulate. I responded that he should call the DMV to thank them for opening up the purse strings...I was ready do dumb the design down to a simple box to make it fit my original budget!