The Melbourne Public Library on Swanston Street, 1853–1869.

State Library Victoria began as a colonial civic project. English Wikipedia says the decision to build a combined library, museum and gallery in Melbourne was made in 1853 at the instigation of the lieutenant-governor Charles La Trobe and the judge Redmond Barry, and that a design competition was won by the recently arrived architect Joseph Reed, whose firm and its successors went on to design most of the later extensions. On 3 July 1854 the new governor, Sir Charles Hotham, laid the foundation stone of the library on the same day as that of the University of Melbourne.

The first stage, the central part of the Swanston Street wing, opened on 11 February 1856 as the Melbourne Public Library, with a collection chosen by Barry as president of the trustees. Wikipedia says Augustus Tulk was appointed librarian three months after the opening, and that the library was open to anyone over 14 years of age so long as they had clean hands. In 1860 Reed drew up a scheme for the whole city block, including a domed section, and Wikipedia says the plan was more or less followed over the next century.

The library gave itself a motto and a seal from the start. Its own history guide says the original motto was “Delectant domi non impediunt foris peregrinantur”, taken from Cicero’s speech Pro Archia and translated by the library as “a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad”, and that the original seal featured a bookshelf motif. The guide says the seal and motto were used from 1854 and were stamped on the covers of many older books in the collection. The books sent out by the Travelling Libraries carried a variant with one extra word, rusticantur, which the library reads as a nod to their purpose of taking books to country districts.

The building grew wing by wing. Wikipedia says the south part of the front wing, with the first-floor Queen’s Reading Room (now Queen’s Hall), opened in 1859; the northern part was completed in 1864; and the classical portico was not built until 1870. Under the Library, Museums and National Gallery Act of 1869, a single body ran the library together with the National Gallery of Victoria and the museums, and the library guide gives the combined title of that period as the Public Library, Museums and National Gallery. A second seal from 1870, for the combined institution, carried a line from Virgil, “Tum variae venere artes”, which the library translates as “and then the various arts arrived”.

From a domed reading room in 1913 to a reopened Queen’s Hall in 2019.

The dome came half a century after Reed’s plan. The library’s timeline says the architects Bates, Peebles and Smart, successors to Reed’s firm and now known as Bates Smart, were appointed in February 1907 to design a new library building; the builders JW & DA Swanson were appointed in 1909, the foundation stone was laid on 26 October 1909, and the Domed Reading Room opened on 14 November 1913. Wikipedia credits the design to Norman G. Peebles and describes an octagonal space six storeys high, 34.75 metres in both diameter and height. The motto appears there too: the library guide says it is worked into several 1910 stained-glass windows in the stairwells of the west and north links of the dome.

The names changed with the law. The library guide says the Public Library, National Gallery and Museums Act of 1944 separated the three institutions, which stayed on one site, and the library became the Public Library of Victoria; State Library of Victoria became the official title after an Act of 1960. Wikipedia says the dome’s skylights were sheathed in copper in 1959 because of leaks; the National Gallery of Victoria moved to St Kilda Road in 1967–68, and the museums followed in the 1990s.

Two campaigns of works followed. Wikipedia says refurbishments between 1990 and 2004 were designed by Ancher Mortlock & Woolley, and that the reading room under the dome reopened in 2003 as the La Trobe Reading Room, with its skylights uncovered again. The second campaign was Vision 2020, which began in 2015. Archinect reported on 10 December 2019 that a team led by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Architectus had won the competition in 2016, and that the brief was to revitalise existing spaces, create new connections and set a framework for the building’s future.

The Urban Developer reported on 5 December 2019 that the redevelopment was complete. It said the work covered the Victoria Gallery, the Russell Street entrance, the Isabella Fraser Room, the Quad linking the library’s four activity courtyards and the Ian Potter Queen’s Hall, reopened after 16 years, and that a 1910 marble staircase leading to the dome was back in use after being closed since 2003, its worn marble kept beneath a new overlay. Ruth Wilson of Architectus told the site the approach was a “focus on revealing rather than replicating the heritage elements”, developed with Andronas Conservation Architects to bring back original paint schemes and timber floors and to reuse furniture.

A Cicero motto, a bookshelf seal and a name without “of”.

For a library, visual identity begins long before a logo. The library card is often the object a member carries every day, and its design sets the tone for every later contact, from the issue desk to the self-service kiosk. Inside the building, signage and wayfinding do much of the identity work: floor directories, shelf-end labels, room names and pictograms have to be legible at a glance, in several languages where needed, and consistent across reading rooms, stacks and children’s areas. Shelf classification is itself a visual system. Call numbers, subject bands and colour-coded spine labels turn an abstract scheme of knowledge into marks that readers learn to scan, and a well-ordered shelf can say as much about an institution as its letterhead.

The building often acts as the symbol. Many libraries are known by a facade, a reading room or a stair, and their graphics are built to sit alongside that architecture rather than compete with it, with restrained palettes and typefaces chosen for long texts and small sizes. The digital side now carries equal weight: the online catalogue, the app, the e-lending platform and the digitised collections need the same names, icons and tone as the signs in the hall, so that a search on a phone and a visit in person feel like one service. For library systems with many branches, identity becomes a framework, one shared name and set of rules that lets each local building keep its own character while remaining recognisably part of the network.

From a stamped seal on book covers to a wordmark with a window.

The current name is a brand decision, not a statute. The library’s history guide says that from 17 November 2014 the library “repositioned its brand” and became known as State Library Victoria, dropping the “of” from the title it had carried since 1960. The board that governs it has its own name: the guide says the Library Board of Victoria was established in February 1997, when an amending act renamed the former Council of the State Library of Victoria.

The reopening in 2019 brought a campaign identity. The Melbourne agency Bright Labs says it designed the visual identity for the library’s launch campaign, built on the tagline “Just add curiosity”, which it says the library wrote itself. Bright Labs says the campaign wordmark uses an oversized “O” meant as a window into the new spaces, comes in horizontal and vertical lockups, runs in a restrained black and white palette and was animated for video, social media and the large digital screens inside the building. It says the large drop-down banners on the façade were designed by the library’s in-house team.

The older marks are still visible on site. The library guide says the 1854 seal and motto appear on the entrance to the theatrette in the former La Trobe Library building, and the 1910 windows keep the motto in the dome’s stairwells.

For a design guide, State Library Victoria shows an identity carried by its architecture and its words: a bookshelf seal and a Cicero motto from 1854, a dome from 1913, a shortened name from 2014 and a black-and-white campaign mark with a window in its “O” for the 2019 reopening. Compare the National Library of Singapore and New York Public Library guides. For this guide we use dome verdigris, reading-room cream, portico stone and campaign black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep State Library Victoria’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.