Proper signage is one of a library’s greatest assets. Not only is it critical for directing patrons towards the resources they seek, but good signage can also act as fun, colorful decorations. With the viral-ability of memes and graphics online, we all know how powerful graphics can be!
Unfortunately, purchasing awesome or personalized signage can become pricey. Which poses a problem, as many libraries face increasingly limited funds. Luckily there are tons of free resources that make it possible to easily design free signage! And I LOOOOVVVEEE designing signage. Since I have all this signage just laying around, I figured I’d share it with you all! Feel free to reuse any of my genre signs. All of them can be found at the bottom of this post. Just right-click and “save as.”
Which Free Resources?
Canva.com and Postermywall.com are two of my favorite places to design signage.
Rasterbator.net is my favorite free tool for blowing up my designs into posters. Its great because you can create large free posters (as large as you want) without needing a poster printer! You upload your picture (as high resolution as possible) into rasterbator.net. Then it lets you choose how large you want to blow it up. It then generates a printable pdf bundle where your image is blown up across multiple standard pages. You print it and then tape or glue them together, and voila, you’ve got a free poster in any size you want!
As you can see, you can’t even tell where the seams are taped together on my posters. Rasterbator.net is. just. that. good.
So I’ve created a ton of signage for my library. Here are some of the ways I use different signs in our library.
Some of the signs are used to indicate the permanent genre sections (as seen in first two pics of post).
When we genre-fied, I left a bookcase empty in between each of our permanent genre sections for use to display nonfiction books that pair well with the nearby genres. That’s what the brown signs are used for. You can see some of these nonfiction pairing displays below.
Some of the signs were created for semi-permanent displays that I do (in addition to our normal permanent genres) such as Quick Picks and Love & Romance. They’re not official genres, but I keep the displays up most of the year anyway.
And some of them are mini-signs that I created for the times when I pull just a few books for mini displays/highlights. As seen here:
Below you will find all of the genre-type signage I’ve created thus far. All are free for you to use. Please do not resell them or anything like that. You can save them by right-clicking and choosing “save as.”
Here are my large sized fiction genre posters. I made them 24inx8in which allowed me to have rasterbator.net create them across three pages.
Here are some of the 6inx4in mini-signs I use for mini-displays.
Here are various 8.5×11 sized signs I’ve created for various displays/uses over the years.
Enjoy!
Don't Shush Me! 
Thank you so much for all of the information you have shared! I found everything to be extremely helpful! I especially loved all of the decorative posters you have given the public access to save and use in libraries!
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You’re very welcome!
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Hi Kelsey,
These are truly amazing! I absolutely love your approach!! Would you consider sharing copies of your genre signage on Poster My Wall? I would love to use these awesome posters, but I’d like to adjust some things here and there. Thank you for your consideration!
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Hi Jessica, I’m so sorry I actually can’t! Poster my wall eventually changed to a limited design amount on the free account and I had to delete my previous designs (after saving them) so I could free up space 😩
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I’m starting to genrefy my middle school library and am so excited! Your blog was so helpful! Starting pulling books 2 days ago. I wake up thinking about it!! Thanks for all the inspiration!
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yay! Happy to help!
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Thank you so much for sharing these! I am trying to create some similar to yours on Poster My Wall but trying to figure out how you got your silouhettes to blend in with the background.
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Happy to help! I can’t remember if you can do it in postermywall (I think so) but in Canva It let’s you tint the silhouette or change its color. I do that and then I usually alter the transparency of the silhouette to soften it
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Thanks! I will give it a try.
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What size were the posters on top of your bookshelves (the large ones)? Also, how do you stand the posters upright? We are creating our posters in Canva but then we will print them out at Staples. Any suggestions on what type of poster we should get?
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Hi Arleen, Mine are 30inches wide and 10 inches high. I print them using rasterbator.net on standard copy paper and then tape them together. Then I run them through the laminator and simply tape them to two book ends so they sit propped up on top of the bookcase. Hope this helps!
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Just wanted to say I have been reading through your blogs over the last couple of weeks and as a first year TL, they are so helpful! Thank you.
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I’m so glad they are helpful! And congrats on starting as a TL!!!
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Thank you so much for sharing your signs. They are really helping me get started creating a more welcoming environment.
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Hi there, wow, from the bottom of my heart I want to say a big, big thank you for sharing your beautiful signs. It’s almost next to never that people share such awesome stuff. You are an angel!
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You’re very welcome! Happy to help!
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