Bibliothèque – Brand New Website

Jun 3rd, 2010
19 Comments

Bibliothèque Brand New Website

Foreword
It isn’t surprising that Bibliothèque’s new website was the talk of the Twitter town yesterday afternoon – a collaboration with Engage & the team in-house – it not only exhibits that classic Bibliothèque functionality we’ve all come to know and love, but it also hosts a plethora of old and new projects!

I had a bit of a hard time choosing what to feature in this article (that’s what happens when there’s too much choice) nevertheless, I decided to go with 2 of their newer projects followed by 2 of their older, more familiar projects. I’ve always looked for a good excuse to feature their timeless Moving Brands identity and this Ladies and Gentlemen, happens to be the perfect excuse. Enjoy!

Projects (in order of appearance):
Long Lunch poster & tickets
Allude identity
Engage identity
Moving Brands identity

Bibliothèque are a London based design consultancy. They produce effective and captivating design solutions that are underpinned by conceptual thinking, meticulous attention to detail and innovative production. For more info visit: www.bibliothequedesign.com

Bibliothèque Brand New Website

This post is tagged Bibliothèque, Branding, Communications, Identity

Jun 3rd, 2010

Marc

So blown away by the quality of their work!
Jun 3rd, 2010

David

@Marc you can say that again!
Jun 3rd, 2010

Melissa Chan

The quality of work really shines through in all their projects. That is what I admire about Bibliothèque – every little detail is thought out and executed to almost perfection. Take their new website for instance…is a balance of functionality and aesthetics (not an easy feat!).
Jun 3rd, 2010

John Instruct

Stunning, makes you sick with envy in a good way!
Jun 3rd, 2010

Luke

The Moving Brands identity is one of my favourite pieces of design too – up there with the Barbican identity by North.

Not overly enamoured with the website to be honest – design wise it looks perfect. But with the fade in/out of pages and the fact that the individual projects aren’t listed in the sub-nav, it means you can’t zip around the site as quickly as I’d like too.

However, this is obviously being hyper-critical.

The fact that they didn’t want to use cufón for the titles because they wanted to hand-kern them is just hilarious! But looking at their work, I’d expect nothing less.

Generally the work is so tight and immaculate it actually makes me swoon.
Too many favourites for me – I wouldn’t have been able to pick just 4 projects to showcase!
Jun 3rd, 2010

Guillaume

I loved their last website so much. Can’t really see the added value of all those pdf-screenshots.

Still my favourite studio though.
Jun 3rd, 2010

Sean

Luke> Incidentally, I believe Mason Wells and Tim Beard had worked on the Barbican identity prior to leaving North.
Jun 4th, 2010

David M

Lovely, lets the quality of the work speak for itself whilst also adding a few nice touches.
Jun 4th, 2010

ron

I do appreciate the detail and the rigour. But the overall feel of the work is nostalgic and laboured in my opinion
Jun 4th, 2010

Peter

Exceptional work, though the new web site is not so hot.
Two project menus, large images are painfully slow to load, inconsistent behaviors re. how images are revealed (scroll down, scroll across, click minuscule triangles). No explanatory text in the project section, just images.
Jun 4th, 2010

Dancer

I think I must be one of the only people that is not a huge fan of the Moving Brands ID. Don’t get me wrong I thin the rest of their work is stunning but just not a big fan of this solution
Jun 4th, 2010

Ryan

Just love the Moving Brands identity system, especially the red dot for the Japanese branch.
Jun 7th, 2010

Stripeyhorse

Love the Bibliothèque Design Museum poster!
Jun 9th, 2010

David

@Guillaume I for one, really appreciate the PDF screenshots – it’s a great way to exhibit their beautiful layout/grid work whilst demonstrating how they deal with large amounts of information in projects that are bound by the ever-changing size of the format.

@Peter I didn’t have a problem with the projects section – you can choose what discipline to focus on via the menu on the left. If you’d like to learn more about a certain project, you are presented with a project overview once you click through to the individual project page.
Jun 9th, 2010

David

@Dancer To each their own :) What I love so much about the identity besides the fact that the logo contains contains the initials MB, is it’s flexibility – it looks great in print and on screen. I also love how the logo can be used as a design element as well.

@Ryan It’s that attention to detail that I love so much about Bibliothèque!
Jun 9th, 2010

Grez

@David. Nice choice for inclusion on SI. The majority of their work is a shining example of two very real and important aspects in commercial design, in my experience:

1. In a business climate clients will always ask designers to handle, arrange and communicate ridiculously large amounts of information – regardless of the agreed format and size of the deliverable in-hand.

2. Bibiliotheque’s work demonstrates (as mentioned already in the comments), how these stigmas have been handled to the point where the end result is mutually beneficial to both the agency and the client. It is functional (in that is communicative), whilst still maintaining an aesthetic flair that fits in with the distinctive niche of their portfolio.

This is refreshing to see, as often design agencies are usually confident only showing the work which provides what they themselves consider to be fantastic platforms for graphic and typographic exploration due to limited text and abundances of white space.

I realise I might be a bit late with this post – but in light of some of the criticism I think it is important to understand.
Jun 9th, 2010

David

@Grez Some excellent points and a great, positive way to end the post :)
Jul 29th, 2010

M/F

rehashed design work that sends me to sleep … moving brands id looks like a cheap version on and 8v0 id

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Bibliothèque – Brand New Website

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