Can a 200-year-old establishment rebrand as innovative? The Brooklyn Museum of Artwork is trying to do exactly that with its new brand design.
The brand new “visible identification” of the museum entails a sans serif font, new ligatures that includes an overlapping ‘o’ in Brooklyn and a mixed ‘u’ and ‘m’ on the finish of museum, and two dots surrounding the establishment’s title meant to imitate people who body the names of historic philosophers, playwrights, and poets on the constructing’s facade.
“This reference to writers and thinkers hyperlinks to our beginnings as a library and to the intersectional nature of the humanities,” the museum said in a launch.
“Particularly, the model appears to be like to the Museum’s iconic constructing, contemplating its evolution from an unique neoclassical design by McKim, Mead & White to its strikes towards modernism within the Thirties, to latest initiatives which have created extra open and welcoming areas. The model attracts on these components from our previous and unites them with our identification immediately as a up to date establishment,” it continued.
The emblem was designed by Brooklyn-based graphic design studio Different Means, with help from the museum’s in-house graphic designers.
However does introducing a brand new brand in vibrant colours throughout varied types of signage, digital campaigns and merchandise equate to a model reset? Maybe not when the “new” design is eerily paying homage to the 1972 Massimo Vignelli Bloomingdale’s brand, which additionally options the signature double ‘o’ ligature. With no crucial consideration both method up to now, the brand new redesign hasn’t but made the splash the museum was seemingly hoping for.
Arguably, the Brooklyn Museum is late to the celebration. Final 12 months, New York noticed its personal rebranding of types to blended evaluations that left New Yorkers nostalgic for the previous brand. Beforehand, in 2016, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork additionally rebranded to make its ‘m’ appear to be a Leonardo work. The change was met with criticism that drew comparability to “a purple double-decker bus that has stopped brief, shoving the passengers into one another’s backs”, a lot to the establishment’s chagrin.
“The ways in which audiences are participating with museums are increasing, and we would have liked a brand new model that meets the calls for of the day, honors our wealthy historical past, and brings an entire lot of vitality. And there’s no higher time to launch it than our two hundredth anniversary,” Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak stated in a press release.
The redesign additionally begs the query: what kind of future is the Brooklyn Museum pursuing?The museum, in keeping with the discharge, envisions itself as a sort of cultural hub for “multifaceted audiences”, boasting an “artwork museum, academic heart, discussion board for concepts, weekend hotspot” of types. Over the previous couple of years, the establishment has pivoted in direction of exhibitions that attraction extra to a common viewers than artwork world stalwarts, with comic Hannah Gatsby curating a present on Picasso and numerous style exhibits 12 months over 12 months meant to spice up total attendance.
Maybe, then, borrowing from retailers is simply the method the museum is hoping will entice all by way of its doorways.