Gold Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2022
Biblioteche di Roma Rebranding
- A' Design Award 2022 Gold Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2022
- CLIENT: Sistema Biblioteche di Roma
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 93,422
- Verification code 34447793AD · Verify this award
About Biblioteche di Roma Rebranding
Biblioteche di Roma is a brand identity created for the public library network of the city of Rome. The identity marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the library system and is intended to express innovation and accessibility. The historic logo showed a closed book resting on its side. The new symbol shows an open book that can also be read as the first letter of the name. The graphic sign is clean and essential. The identity is applied to the stationery system, digital touchpoints, advertising, outdoor media and signage.
This distinguished visual identity, created for a major public library system, exemplifies the contemporary approach to cultural institution branding wherein symbolic resonance and functional clarity achieve harmonious synthesis. The designer demonstrates acute sensitivity to the challenge of representing accumulated human knowledge through reduced visual means, arriving at a monogram that simultaneously reads as the initial letter of the institution and as an elegant abstraction of the book form itself, those curved elements suggesting pages perpetually in motion, ever-ready to be turned by curious hands. The chromatic selection proves particularly astute, the warm vermillion carrying associations of vitality, passion, and intellectual energy while maintaining sufficient gravitas for an institution of cultural significance. Against the expansive white field, which itself might evoke the blank page awaiting inscription, this red mark pulses with life, suggesting that libraries are dynamic spaces of active engagement rather than static repositories. The accompanying typography in deep black establishes necessary institutional authority while its humanist proportions and open forms welcome rather than intimidate. One observes in this system the skilled balance between universality and specificity, the forms legible across cultures yet distinctive enough to build recognition within their particular context. The design participates in a distinguished lineage of European institutional identity work while bringing fresh interpretation to enduring challenges of representing knowledge, access, and public service. Viewers might contemplate how such apparently simple forms carry such complex meanings, and how the reduction of visual elements can paradoxically expand rather than limit expressive possibility.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- To convey the idea of an agile structure such as Istituzione Sistema Biblioteche di Roma (Rome’s public libraries), which on its 25th anniversary needed to reflect its essence with greater force, we created a new identity to express innovation and accessibility. The identity of Biblioteche, in all its applications, is linked to the presence of the institutional brand Roma Culture of the Department for Cultural Growth of the Municipality of Rome which is a stakeholder in Biblioteche system.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The coordinated image was applied to all physical and digital touchpoints of the Biblioteche di Roma system:
-Stationery system
-Digital touchpoints
-Adv
-OOH
-Signage - Tags
- ragu communication, brand identity, rebranding, institutional communication, concept, graphic, logo, corporate identity, brandbook, anniversary campaign
- Production Technology
- The idea was to reproduce the symbol of an open book that could be read at the same time as the first letter of the brand. A clean, essential graphic sign, perfect for dialogue with local but also international institutions.
- Design Challenge
- On reaching the milestone of its twenty-fifth anniversary, the Istituzione Sistema Biblioteche di Roma, felt the need to reflect its contemporary and accessible essence more effectively. A challenge of innovation and simplification accepted by Ragù Communication. The Rome-based studio has in fact conceived and designed a new brand identity with the power to fully convey the idea of an agile and modern institutional structure.
- Project Duration
- The project began in Rome in January 2021 and was delivered to the client in April 2021
- Operation Flow
- With the creation of a new identity with a more accessible, modern and inclusive design, a brand such as that of the public libraries of Rome has maximum impact, proving to be a powerful tool for the recognisability of the image of this service organised in a widespread network of branches throughout the Municipality of Rome. Users can therefore easily associate the visual identity with the service provided, recognise it and use it as a result.
- Inspiration
- In this new identity we find the book, already familiar from the historic logo - represented by the illustration of a closed book resting on its side - but with an important change: it is an open book, a powerful symbol of accessibility, because it is open and accessible to the entire Biblioteche network
- Image Credits
- Ragu Communication
- Patents
- Istituzione Sistema Biblioteche Centri Culturali of the Municipality of Rome