Ex Lib.

Above: Menus (front cover and sample inside page)

Business card (obverse & reverse)

Note: You are not at liberty to borrow any of this content for your own purposes or for a third party without my permission.

Full Disclosure: I went to Ex Libris a whopping once during my four years at the University. The cafe itself was not particularly memorable, which is a darn shame when you think about its location (read: The bloody Reg). Given its context, I think that a visual identity overhaul that references its context/surrounding architecture will be part of any large-scale enterprise to improve said establishment's presence and prominence. The goal would be to make Ex Libris a more formal sit-down establishment, a cafe designed for extended stays that would also appeal to new customers who are more familiar with the Reg than its resident cafe.

Having said this, let's begin with the logo, which acknowledges the Reg's shape and texture, as well as the books housed therein and the name of the cafe itself through the thick "hatching" and a simple directional contrast that lends the impression of a cube/rectangular prism extruding out from a surface (the thick hatch marks were also designed to resemble books' spines). The logo can be extended through patterning, and can serve as the basis of a more elaborate but modular system. It can also be used to "frame" photos or other artwork, thereby making it dynamic.

Materials-wise, the business cards and the cover of the menu would be printed on heavy cover paper (or debossed with the logo foil-stamped or UV-coated if budget constraints permit). The menu covers would  form a heavy folder (heavy cover stock laminated over board stock?), which in turn serves as an affordance for the inside pages, printed on light satin A4, this time without varnishing or UV-coating.

I plan on extending this brand into a holistic system (always a fun exercise), so chances are you'll see some designs for signage/environmental work down the road.

Reappraisals: The Maroon

Quick new re-interpretation of the Maroon (top) and old re-design (bottom)
Note: This hypothetical redesign is the property of Tom Tian, and may not be used without his express permission.

Few things are as sobering and edifying as critiquing one's earlier work. I recall revamping the Chicago Maroon's print edition a few years back and thinking that it was the best thing since sliced bread. At the time, it did represent a pretty radical departure from precedent insofar as it attempted to be much more systematic in its type treatment, hierarchy, and layout. It was also more generous in its use of white space, which helped to punctuate and define the content.

Looking back, my runaway indulgence in systematism undermined its long-term reproducibility. Contrast is a good thing, but overuse leads to complex systems that cannot be easily duplicated. Moreover, excessive differentiation risks fragmenting the design into components that do not easily cohere into one product or idea.

With this in mind, if I were to redesign the Maroon again today I'd start with a modular grid and scale; without changing the size of the page, this means setting down a 5 x 8 grid and 3:4 scale, which roughly correspond to the page itself (11:17). Once determined, these relations would then inform my subsequent choices, such as spacing and type size.

Whereas the old redesign was a cacophony of various weights and types (Gotham and Adobe Caslon), the new one would use fewer weights from one family (Adobe Garamond Pro), set flush left to facilitate reading. The modular grid can be thought of as a chart or table of sorts, whereupon horizontal rules of varying weights can serve to divide/partition the page into portions that reflect the importance of whatever content it houses, thereby shifting the burden of differentiation from the type to spacing and layout.

On the non-design side, I would do away with bylines in favor of an expanded masthead; the "topic tags" would also go, as they belong online and have no place in print. The end product is a more modular, parsimonious system that retains the virtues of the older design while curbing its excesses.