I’m a little late to the game with this one. But I just want to take a quick minute to talk about the new-ish Toronto Public Library logo. The new identity system for the library rolled out this fall, the work of a partnership between Trajectory, OCAD University’s Inclusive Design Research Centre and OCAD’s DesignFutures Lab. Trajectory designed the new logo and brand identity, with the goal of developing a new visual language that met the needs of the customer base and communicated the library’s brand message. There was much discussion, consultation, and collaboration around the development of the new identity system, with extensive consultation and engagement with both the library’s customers and staff. Trajectory states that their “multi-pronged, immersive, and experiential design process was structured to be future-focused and anticipate emerging customer service opportunities.”

So in the end, how is it? Was it all worth it?

Let me start by saying that I am an enormous fan of our city library. I love, love, love it: the services it offers, the people that work there, the myriad of spaces it makes available, the programming, the movies, the music, the books. Oh the books. The Toronto Public Library system is big and beautiful and something I am grateful for every damn day.

But really, I’ve loved it despite its clunky identity system. The old logo—unveiled in 2002, shortly after amalgamation—wasn’t great. It was designed using weirdly-spaced Gill Sans Extra Bold, capped with two overlapping arches. I’m guessing these are supposed to reflect the arches at Nathan Phillips Square. Maybe they’re also supposed to indicate bridges/connectors? Or the open pages of books? To be honest, I never really considered their purpose until just now. They were just there, like the logo itself, filling a space. Overall, the look was “meh”. Dated, sort of dull, in a boring, conservative-Toronto-blue. The logo was awkward and geeky and trying to be a bit interesting but getting it wrong and I did sort of like that about it.

I also liked the use of all caps, which gave the library a more bold, authoritative, solid feel. Like it wasn’t going anywhere (at least, not past the turn of the century.)

And while the library hasn’t gone anywhere—despite the efforts of various politicians—the identity has. Which isn’t a bad thing, but is it a GOOD thing?

READING THE NEW TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY LOGO

The roundness of the new logo’s typeface is happy and open. It’s safe. It’s a type style similar to a very many other logos produced over the past couple of years; it’s fresh and it fits in.

The lower case text feels less formal than the old logo. The thing is, I like formal for a library (I’m all for whispers and gentle book-handling and the merits of the Dewey decimal system.) Plus, it’s grammatically incorrect—the library’s name is a proper noun, and should be capitalized—and inflicting bad grammar on a library logo just seems cruel. Maybe the intention was to make it seem less academic and more laid-back? Are uppercase letters simply not approachable?

I also don’t like the logo giving those lowercase “tpl” initials a place of dominance. Because right now, nobody calls it “the tpl”. The good people of Toronto call it “the library”. Two actual words. Was this done to encourage people to start calling it “the tpl” instead? But why? It looks like this “tpl” will be used as the main descriptor on much of the brand collateral. Again, there’s bias on my part, but I think there’s honour and goodness in the word “library”, and don’t like having an acronym given the main place in this logo. The library is about words. Full words. Words used to capture meaning and shape stories and teach about things. Words in books and in the mouths of storytellers and on screens and gracing the events posters and under the fat fingers of kindergartners. And ideally, yes: in the logo.

The colon is a new addition that’s a bit controversial among designers, it seems. I don’t mind it. It adds colour (the colour changes, depending on the application) and connects the library—sorry, the “tpl”—with all of their offerings. I see why it’s there, and it works. The colon’s role is further described on Trajectory’s project page: “based on TPL’s brand promise of Activate Something Great, the colon-based “activator” acts as a connector for all the diverse opportunities and experiences the library creates for individuals, communities and the city as a whole.” Yeah, ok. I buy that.

Overall, I still feel like this new logo is—like the old one, but for different reasons—a bit meh. It’s balanced, it works decently across many applications, it’s fairly simple, but it reads like it’s trying to fit in so that it doesn’t get called out for being a nerd, and I find that off-putting. It wants to everyone to like it, and just ends up coming across as sort of cute, and sort of dumb. It doesn’t tell a good story. And that doesn’t do the Toronto Public Library justice.

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>> For some alternate logo concepts, there’s a great selection in a 2017 article from Andrew Colgoni, on his AD/LIB site. Let me know how you think these logos compare to the current one.