Art Direction
Messaging Strategy
Project Management
Video Production
Librarians are among America's most trusted public servants, yet their work is often reduced to books and quiet spaces. In reality, they are educators, advocates, first responders, and community connectors, helping people navigate everything from healthcare and education to economic opportunity. At a time of growing political scrutiny and public debate over the role of libraries, there was an opportunity to tell a different story about their role in American society.
Working with the American Library Association and Academy Award-winning production studio, Smartypants Pictures, I helped transform their I Love My Librarian Award (co-sponsored by the New York Public Library and Andrew Carnegie Foundation) from an annual recognition program into a broader multi-platform storytelling campaign that celebrated librarians as essential civic heroes at the heart of every American community. Through stories spanning rural, suburban, and urban communities, For the Love of Librarians is a love letter to librarians that reveals the often unseen ways they are building stronger, more resilient communities, reframing the profession through the people who live it every day.
Photography by Thomas Ingersoll
I developed a multimedia-driven campaign strategy and art direction, commissioned an Oscar-winning film studio to produce short documentaries, and led end-to-end project/stakeholder management for For the Love of Librarians.
Photography by Thomas Ingersoll
Inspired by superhero movie posters and character-driven photography, the powerful portraiture at the heart of this campaign reimagined librarians as heroes, celebrating the extraordinary impact of these ordinary public servants against the architectural backdrop of the Phoenix Public Library in Arizona. The beautiful photography shown here, produced Phoenix-based photographer Thomas Ingersoll, formed the foundation of this year-round campaign created with the American Library Association and Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The campaign was designed as series, spanning a 13-part short-form social series, 3 short documentaries, and concepts for out-of-home and community activations, including bookmarks and special edition library cards at each featured librarian's library.
The production of the 13-part video series included a three-part short documentary series and a 10-part social short series, featuring ten librarians from across the country who were nominated by their communities for changing lives. Created in partnership with Academy Award-winning production studio Smartypants Pictures, the films followed a bookmobile librarian serving Maui communities after devastating wildfires, a West Virginia librarian helping immigrant students find belonging through books in their native languages, and a librarian in a Delaware youth detention facility using literacy to create hope and opportunity.
Working within a lean, remote production model, I worked closely with Smartypants to choose the subjects, shape the narrative direction, guide interview direction, manage the internal feedback and review process, art direct the photography, and personally executed on all the campaign assets for the videos. The result was an intimate, authentic series that brought audiences closer to the people behind one of America's most trusted institutions: the public library.
The campaign demonstrated how storytelling can expand the value of an existing program beyond recognition and into long-term advocacy. Rather than creating a campaign that ended with the awards, it established a repeatable communications model for the award program capable of elevating an entire profession through human-centered stories year-round.
Photography
Thomas Ingersoll
Production
Anna Rowe, Executive Producer, Smartypants Pictures
Eric Nichols, Creative Director, Smartypants Pictures
Amy Shand, Production Manager, Smartypants Pictures
Marketing
Catriona W., Social Dissemination Strategy, Carnegie
Wilfred C., Editorial and Copy, Carnegie
Angely M., Project Management Support, Carnegie
Daniel U., Creative Consultant, Carnegie
Khafra C., Creative Consultant, Carnegie