This week’s responsibility in class is to create a brochure on a resource useful for your library. I will be working in an elementary school library, but my students will also have access to the wonderful resources provided by our local public library, including Kanopy Kids. Students are eligible for a library card with the public library if they are a student in the district.
Why Kanopy Kids?
Kanopy Kids is another way parents can encourage students’ literacy, as there are so many great read-aloud resources (including crowd favorites like Mo Willems’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!). It’s a great resource to let kids have some screen time they crave, while still making sure it’s educational. Kanopy Kids can also be a way for students to extend learning over the summer.
I think encouraging parents to get on Kanopy Kids also helps me make sure that parents know they can get their kids a public library card and get their children access to resources they can use without constant supervision. The goal is to encourage some independent choice, exploration and learning for older students.
The design process
To design my brochure, I decided to use Canva. I think they have so many great design template options, and it’s easy to tweak aspects of the template to a color palette or layout you desire.
I chose a simple two-page pdf format so that it would be easy to use digitally, but would still print nicely double-sided on one sheet. At first I started with a tri-fold design, but I found it hard to decipher what panel to read first if I was going to be looking at the pdf digitally rather than printing it. A two-page portrait flyer was a more versatile choice.
When deciding on a template, I focused on looking for ones that signaled education, but still seemed more fun and playful. The focus on primary colors in the one I chose lends that impression (a suggestion I took from Robin Williams’s book, The Non-Designers Design Book). I also liked this layout because it didn’t have a deep color as the background, which often will bleed when it prints or needs to be printed on higher quality paper to avoid this.
I made some tweaks to the layout, such as extending the light grid to the edges of the page, changing the grey lines in images to black for more contrast, and I added the colored boxes underneath text to help you see what information is grouped together.
Ready to see the finished product? Check it out below, and let me know what you think in the comments. (P.S. Click on the link under the pdf viewer below to get it in full screen, where you can click the links!)
The Queer Librarian 
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