The Second Air Division Memorial Trust has managed a library in Norwich since 1963. It commemorates the 6,900 American airmen who lost their lives in action during the Second World War while stationed in Norfolk and Suffolk, UK.

The library is a thriving cultural collection of 4,000 books on American life and culture, and a living memorial to the fallen through its vast digital archive of 30,000 original photographs, letters and memoirs, as well as films, magazines and historic artefacts.

The inspiration: The library’s previous name – 2nd Air Division USAAF Memorial Library – failed to capture the collection’s specialised proposition: to provide readers with books about the United States, its history and its culture.

We recognised that a new name and brand identity would need to embrace Americana and literature, while acknowledging and respecting the sacrifice it commemorates.

The idea: The bold new name – American Library – incapsulates the institution’s forward-thinking approach while remaining true to its offering. The brand logo seamlessly combines the distinctive American flag and an open book, referencing the library’s unique heritage and present-day purpose.

This new and more decisive brand identity is designed to better capture the public’s imagination – challenging misconceptions and representing the reality of what its shelves have to offer.

The brand logo is deconstructed to create further useful assets and graphic devices. The brand icon lends itself well to framing imagery in a variety of ways, as well as forming block colour graphics to further echo the curve in the binding of a book or the turning of a page.

The ability to use the brand logo in one colour allows for a diverse range of executions and production techniques, and a wider application of the identity. The brand logo seamlessly combines the distinctive American flag and an open book – a symbol of commemoration and celebration. A new chapter.