111 Kent

Earlier this year, we prepared a guide for our Home Exchange guests that, among other things, points them to shops and restaurants in the area that we like. 

One recommendation is Bookmark, and when my friend Valerie was reading the guide this morning, she reminded me that I need to update the store’s address, as it has moved around the corner.

When I looked the new address up, and found that it was 111 Kent Street, my typographic brain went into creative mode. 

This afternoon I went over to the print shop, and tried my best to translate what was in my imagination into type. 

Here’s what I came up with:

I went in daunted by the task of angling the “ones” to resemble a falling stack of books, thinking I would need some specialized typographic furniture to pull this off, but I was able to do it through creative use of rectangles.

The bookmarks that resulted, printed in yellow on white card, look like this:

This was absolutely, positively not an original idea: my mother worked for many years as a librarian for Wentworth Libraries, the rural library system serving communities around Hamilton, Ontario that has since been amalgamated into the Hamilton Public Library. 

The library system’s logo was a brilliant riff on the same theme, a stylized capital W (for Wentworth) formed from books:

I love that mug: it reminds me of the tiny Carlisle Public Library, at the time located in the back of the Community Hall, where I spent so many hours as a kid (see also).

Once they dry I’ll drop the Bookmark bookmarks round 111 as a gift for the hardworking staff who just moved a bookstore.