Brimbank Libraries

Brimbank City Council offers communities five libraries located in Deer Park, Keilor, St Albans, Sunshine and Sydenham. These libraries are highly regarded and valued by the community. Brimbank City Council needed a website that brought this notion of community to life digitally. An experience that was inclusive, accessible and inviting. A cohesive and unified approach that catered for many user groups was to be rounded out with the integration of a library-focused CRM.

How do you make libraries cool to some users, safe to others and resourceful to the rest? How do you design a website for essentially everyone in your community? This was the primary challenge faced at the outset of the project. And by all accounts, not a small challenge. After a number of consultations and interviews with the library staff of Brimbank Council, it was clear the future website needed to be accessible to everyone. It needed to be inviting and it needed to provide easy access to information with minimal cognitive load on the user. It needed to be robust and it needed to be flexible.

Establishing a navigation system that was flexible yet concise encapsulated the first phase of the project. This incorporated the design of a recommended information architecture system that would house the abundance of information and resources that the library has to offer the community. From a creative perspective, the visual approach needed to be approachable and inviting. Most importantly, the visual approach needed to not alienate or exclude potential users. Custom shapes, icons and illustrations were developed to aid inclusion and accessibility. Finally, the design approach was modular and flexible enabling the library staff of Brimbank Council to build out content pages and manage their website on their own accord.