Common Ground
A visual identity for a fictional neighborhood reading room.
- Scope
- Identity / Printed matter
- Year
- 2026
- Role
- Concept, writing & art direction
between places.Identity / Printed matter
Starting with the room
The brief was to make a reading room feel open before someone reached the door. The imagined space sits between a library, a workshop and a place to spend an unhurried hour. I began with the material a visitor would actually encounter: a window notice, a folded events sheet and the label on a borrowed book. The identity had to be legible at the scale of an ordinary afternoon, not only as an impressive presentation slide.
A flexible sentence
Common Ground became a sentence that could hold different kinds of activity. The large words stay simple while the smaller text does the specific work: naming a reading, explaining a workshop or telling someone when the room is open. I chose an ochre field because it belongs comfortably to paper and daylight. The identity uses one typographic voice and a small set of alignments rather than a collection of decorative marks.
The printed system
The poster has two jobs. At a distance it gives the room a recognizable presence; at arm’s length it offers a clear next action. The event sheet uses the same proportion but changes the reading order. Its practical information is grouped by date, with room for a short description and access details. The system was tested in black ink as well as color so that a volunteer could produce a useful notice without special printing.
What I left out
An early version used a set of abstract doorway symbols. They made the presentation more varied but did not help a visitor understand the program. Removing them gave the language more responsibility and the page more space. This is an original self-directed study. The project images are typographic compositions created for this portfolio, and the reading room is fictional. There are no invented audience-growth figures or client testimonials.
Come in.
Stay a while.
Reading, making, meeting. A room for the neighborhood.