09.06.2018

Cor­por­ate iden­tity for the Na­tion­al Lib­rary of Ar­gen­tina

The Na­tion­al Lib­rary of the Ar­gen­tine Re­pub­lic is not only a bib­li­o­graph­ic archive, but also the most sig­ni­fic­ant lib­rary in the coun­try. It was named after the founder, Mari­ano Moreno, a politi­cian who par­ti­cip­ated in the May Re­volu­tion of 1810 in Ar­gen­tina and served as sec­ret­ary to the new gov­ern­ment.

In 1962, three ar­chi­tects - Clorindo Testa, Fran­cisco Bull­rich and Alicia Cazzaniga - won a com­pet­i­tion to design a new lib­rary build­ing. The new pa­vil­ion, loc­ated on Via Aguero, has been an ar­chi­tec­tur­al dom­in­ant in the ad­ja­cent build­ings since 1992 and is a sig­ni­fic­ant as­set in the coun­try's cul­tur­al her­it­age.

Last year, the Na­tion­al Lib­rary an­nounced a com­pet­i­tion to cre­ate a new logo and cor­por­ate iden­tity. Out of more than 750 pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted for the com­pet­i­tion, the project won by the design stu­dio B. Estu­dio from Buenos Aires, which was se­lec­ted by the jury and re­ceived the first prize, as well as the pos­sib­il­ity of im­ple­ment­a­tion.

A logo design that would suc­cess­fully em­body the Na­tion­al Lib­rary had to be based on a deep un­der­stand­ing of its rel­ev­ance to Ar­gen­tine cul­ture. With this in mind, B. Estu­dio ”have built a graph­ic iden­tity around three main ideas. The first idea is the his­tory of the lib­rary, its fea­tures and dif­fer­ences from sim­il­ar in­sti­tu­tions. The second idea is the func­tion of the lib­rary: or­gan­iz­ing, stor­ing and col­lect­ing in­form­a­tion to help us un­der­stand the world around us. And the third idea is the ob­jects around which the lib­rary re­volves, that is, the books them­selves.

Com­pan­ion branded ma­ter­i­als have been de­veloped to com­ple­ment the sta­tion­ery, which work as use­ful com­pan­ions for vis­it­ors in the lib­rary's daily activ­it­ies.

The graph­ics sys­tem in­cludes the design of ex­hib­its and work­shops hos­ted by the Na­tion­al Lib­rary, as well as the de­vel­op­ment of ar­chi­tec­tur­al graph­ics and sig­nage for use in the lib­rary's headquar­ters build­ing. The cor­por­ate iden­tity is also re­flec­ted in the web­site design and mo­bile ap­plic­a­tion.

Read more on the website:
behance.net