99% Behance Conference

I was fortunate to attend the 99% Behance Conference in NYC last week. The roster of speakers was simply amazing! I’ve come back feeling a bubbling excitement about what we can do as designers to help our communities, use design as a form of expression, and problem solve beyond picking pantone colours for a client.

One message that seems to ring true for me in the conference is that love is the answer. Michael Bierut from Pentagram spoke about how loving what we do, indulging in our obsessions and passions is truly the key to feeling gratification for the work we do. This route may be more work or less money, but the other personal rewards are plentiful.

So that being said, I’d like to feature one of Michael’s passions, the Library Initiative. He created the identity for the project and worked with many talented muralists to revitalize the deteriorating libraries of New York City. Description from the Pentagram blog:

To date, The Library Initiative has created over 60 new libraries in schools in underserved neighborhoods throughout New York City, introducing the world of reading to new generations of students. As P.S. 47 librarian Joanne Davis told the Times, “A lot of students here have never been in a school library or even a public library.” Robin Hood executive director David Salzman observes that each school library impacts “5 percent of a school’s real estate but 100 percent of its students.” All of this means that The Library Initiative is a remarkable testimony to the power of design, and one of our favourite projects.

The library at P.S. 196 in Soundview, the Bronx, designed by Rafael Esquer of Alfafa Studio. Hundreds of words are interpreted by thousands of silhouettes.

Christoph Niemann’s murals at P.S. 69 in Clason Point, the Bronx. Concealed in every image are one or more books.

A few other specific speakers and project features resonated with me at 99%. I hope to share a few different pieces of that on the bird house blog in the coming weeks!