How do you design an identity for an exhibition?
Start from the subject and the character of the work, then build a small visual system of type, color and a few repeatable elements that can stretch from the poster to the title wall to the labels. An exhibition identity makes the show read as one thing, in the gallery and outside it.
Start from the work
The strongest identities come out of the exhibition itself. For Alec Soth: Colorado Dispatch, the show grew out of Soth's LBM Dispatch #5 publication, and the identity and exhibition design were built to feel like the stark beauty of the pedestrian experience in his work. For The Honest Eye, the identity reflects Pissarro's connection to the working people in his paintings through a layered but intentionally spare approach.
Build a system, not just a logo
An exhibition identity has to work in many places: the title wall, introductory text, labels, wayfinding, invitations and the web. That means choosing a typeface, a color range and a small set of marks or shapes that can scale up and down.
Let restraint do the work
An exhibition is full of objects. The identity should give them room. Fewer, more deliberate choices tend to hold up better across a gallery than a busy graphic language.
In our work
- The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro’s Impressionism
- Alec Soth: Colorado Dispatch
- YALLA: You’ll Never Walk Alone