Ramón Coronado and Marshall Rake reflect on ten years of their LA-based practice Public-Library

Public-Library is the creative practice of Los Angeles-based duo Ramón Coronado and Marshall Rake. We first spoke to them for an interview in 2016 on the back of their five year anniversary, which we then revisited with a follow-up question for our book, The Interviews: Volume One in 2021. Fast forward to now and they’re busy celebrating their ten year anniversary, for which they’ve published a book, a small collection of apparel and a poster. With this in mind, it felt like a good time to catch up again; reflecting on their challenges, learnings and projects that have come from running a design studio for more than a decade. EM: Congrats on 10 years in service! When you first started out, did you have an idea or a plan for what you wanted Public-Library to become? RC: I honestly just wanted to create a space that allowed me to be myself. My ideas aren’t wrong, they are just different. That was my biggest struggle in school and at agencies. I hated the pushback, the search for the path of least resistance. I hated the simple solutions. I hated the easy route. I wanted Public-Library to be an experimental studio that designed solutions based on the clients' needs, not an aesthetic.