L!BRARY Initiative: A Gateway to Fantasy

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
April 2, 2009

Recently, an image in The New York Times of a whimsical, brightly colored mural in a school library grabbed my attention. It was by Stefan Sagmeister, whose maxims in his book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far so captivated me last year that we ran a feature on the book. The mural, based on one of those maxims, is a part of the Robin Hood Foundation’s L!brary Initiative. The project, which joins the forces of powerhouse designers including Christoph Niemann, Maira Kalman, Stefan Sagmeister and Yuko Shimizu, focuses on building new elementary school libraries in low-income neighborhoods.

Sagmeister’s work has had a tremendous impact on me, and I’m so happy that it will now touch the lives of children, too! Yuko Shimizu’s compelling illustration of Sagmeister’s words — “Everyone who is honest is interesting” — leads children to a world of fantasy.

Pentagram, the graphic design firm on the project, enlisted designers to fill the blank space between high ceilings and the tops of bookshelves with murals. There’s a wonderful post of the project, “Murals for the Library Initiative”, on their website, with pictures of five new extraordinary library environments.

These new libraries will make such a difference in the children’s lives thanks to the Robin Hood Foundation. You can make a difference, too, by clicking here to learn how you can get involved.

Credits: Photographs by Yuko Shimizu