Exploring brand identity will allow me to move forwards and create an app which is more effective and well thought through, better fitting to there target audience. This involves understanding what I want to achieve though this rebrand, brand values and names. This will form the basic outline of the brand, which I can build upon later by designing the actual brand and app.

Brand Ideas

Based on my previous research, I felt that I was at a good stage to choose a general ‘theme’. To allow me to have a more particular focus rather than a general research, I wanted to find things that this audience may have in common and could be used as the central focus and core value of my brand.

I want my brands focus to be encouraging reading to those who may not read so often. I noticed that both libraries I visited were pretty quiet, so I did a little research on library use in the UK. I found that 30% of adults aged 16 and over used a public library service at least once in the previous 12 months according to a 2023/24 survey, the most recent statistic I could find.

This statistic was alarming, so I wanted to see if this low number was a reflection of libraries alone or if people overall don’t read much. I found in my research that in most age groups, just over half of people have read a book in the past year, with the lowest percentage being young people aged 18-24. I found this quite shocking, as I fall into this age bracket have read multiple books in the past year. As this audience is in most need of encouragement to read, I have chosen young people as my target audience.

% who have read in the past year (YouGov, 2025)

In terms of whether I was going for a full rebrand or a sub-brand, I was originally thinking of fully rebranding LibrariesNI to be a more encouraging service, however I wasn’t sure if this was the right direction for what I had in mind. My lecturer pointed out to me that this focuses on quite a particular audience, so fully changing LibrariesNI to cater to beginner readers excludes the well-established existing audience.

I have decided upon my sub-brand to be a service to encourage reading to young people.

Target Audience

Based on my research, I have chosen an audience of young people aged 18-24.

Values

I wanted to determine the five key values of my NILibraries app before continuing with my research and moving onto the next steps. Values are like buzzwords: what the service should aim to provide and feel like to users. I came up with a lot of these by creating a diagram in which I wrote words which felt could relate to a library service:

I chose the five I felt best fit with my intentions; encouraging, calm, personal, straightforward and welcoming.

Why these values?

• Encouraging - I would like to create an app which encourages to people to engage in library services more. My research made it clear that less and less people use in-person library services than in the past for various reasons, a barrier than an app and sub brand could help to overcome.
• Calm - Libraries are generally associate with peace and quiet, which I found in my interviews as most people mentioned silence as a key selling point of using library services. Libraries with noise were I’d like to recreate this a much as possible with my app, such as not including distracting features, loud sound effects etc.
• Personal - I’d like my sub-brand to be personal. Those who don’t read much will need personalised service to help them understand and feel comfortable getting into reading. Furthermore, books are intimate; people read things meaningful to them in their personal time, so it’s vital that the process of finding books also feels personal and catered to service users.
• Straightforward - Libraries embrace simplicity, they have existed for years yet maintain the same overall structure and user needs; allowing people to read books for free. I don’t want this basic value to become missing in the process of digitalising a traditional service, so I’ll keep this at the heart of the values of my NILibraries sub brand.
• Welcoming - Those who don’t read will likely feel un unfamiliar territory when they first get into reading, so ensuring that it feels welcoming and comfortable is a must.