love your library button templates (and more): project curve, part one revisited.

A while back I started this series with a post on ‘love your library’ buttons, maker breaks, and other handmade projects we’re working on at the Claremont Colleges Library. After about five months of trying pins out in different outreach contexts and reworking the designs to various ends, I can unequivocally vouch for the soundness of a library button press purchase. These tiny objects are eminently appreciated: students love them, faculty love them, staff love them, librarians love them, patrons love them, parents love them. Cheap and easy, plus local elbow grease (as opposed to outsourcing) tugs at heartstrings… how can you lose?

repurposing and social making

A brief aside before I get to the templates. When you start turning out diy marketing materials, it definitely behooves to always consider how you can 1) take one product and remake it in another venue (aka design recycling) and 2) make the making itself an engaging community-of-practice activity  (e.g., we’re holding pressing parties at orientation and other times of dire need).

Here are a few examples of 1), or how we’re starting to rework the original love your library concept into other materials and forums (and much thanks to Alex Chappell for the awesome button photo, Natalie Tagge for the Illustrator work and maker party action, and Sheree Fu for busting out the stickers):

multipurpose sticker

button press templates

Ever since I posted about the button press, I’ve been getting requests from other maker librarians for template trades. Without further ado, here are several downloadable button designs. All I ask is that if you use any of these and it works out for you, consider sending the following my way in one forum or another:

a)    a pic of the final product in action

b)    a descriptive comment on this post, and/or

c)    a template design of your own in return (I’ll spread the word if you like by adding yours to this post or SlideShare or linking to its location).

specs

All of these are made for a 1’’ button press and circle cutter (I haven’t tried them in a larger system, although they would likely scale up fine) and are creative commons sharealike for non-commercial purposes. When you print on 8.5×11 paper, don’t “fit to printable area” as a setting (it will scale the designs down by a few percentage points: not the end of the world but noticeably smaller during the cutting phase). Advanced makers: please charbooth at gmail me if you’re interested in the .ai files.

Some of the templates are pre-heartstamped and colored for those time-pressed among you, while others are blank: you can customize by printing on fancy paper and stamping your own designs or take a finished template and run. The last and simplest template can be imported into InDesign, Illustrator, or Photoshop, etc. and used to build new buttons from scratch.

Happy making, and love your library.