Baltimore Museum of Art Rebranding

Branding, Design

/ 2020
Rebranding campaign and participatory logo for the Baltimore Museum of Art

A participatory logo and evolving identity for a leading art museum

Public Mechanics teamed up with Topos Graphics for this institutional rebranding of the BMA. The new identity repositions the museum as a national cultural leader and forges new connections with the museum’s local community.

Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity and stationery design with variable logos applied to staff business card
Business cards each display a unique version of the logo featuring staff handwriting.

A collaborative logo

The evolving, experimental BMA mark incorporates the handwriting of thousands of Baltimore community members and artists. Visitors can contribute to this collective “signature” using an iPad app in the museum’s lobby. The visual identity includes a flexible color system, typography, and graphics that are designed adapt to the dynamic needs and audiences of a contemporary museum.

Baltimore Museum of Art logo design. An evolving brand identity with visitor-drawn handwritten BMA mark
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity visitors adding their handwriting to the collective museum logo design
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity visitors us an iPad app to add their handwriting to the collective museum logo design
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity

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The dashed line plays an important visual and conceptual role in the BMA brand identity, representing the museum as an evolving platform for creativity and community. It is also symbolic of the evolving, dynamic nature of the museum — a work in progress, openness, a space for participation. The line provides the design team with a flexible graphic element for BMA sub-brands, branded iconography, print collateral, wayfinding, and more.

Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity, logo and wayfinding icons
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity social media logo and avatar
Baltimore Museum of Art logo system

A flexible color system

The Topos team conceived a comprehensive color system inspired by the BMA’s brand values: honesty, vibrancy, empathy, and fearlessness. The color also starts where the BMA began, with the gift of a painting called “Mischief” by William Sergeant Kendall. Calculating that painting’s average color value results in a tan hue, which becomes the starting point for the BMA’s institutional color system. (The color is also a nod to the museum’s sandstone facade.) Saturating this “honest” tone creates a vibrant orange-red hue. A warm purple, is color-analogous to the orange-red. Finally, for fearless, the team chose a color that defies easy description, a hue somewhere between purple and blue.

Because it’s a color system rather than just a palette, the relationships governing each color selection can be applied to create new palettes for special exhibitions, events, or other Museum initiatives.

Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity color palette: fearless, honest, vibrant, empathetic
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity haptic color background treatment
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity haptic color background treatment
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity haptic color background treatment
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity haptic color background treatment
Topos Graphics also developed a process for making textural “haptic” backgrounds from photography. The result adds vibrancy and sensuous tactile elements meant to bring depth and human warmth to design applications.
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity visitor guide and museum map design by Topos Graphics
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity and wayfinding signage John Waters Restrooms, all gender
The new brand identity in action on signage and exhibition graphics. (Photo by Erika Nizborski)
Baltimore Museum of Art brand identity and wayfinding signage
Baltimore Museum of Art banners in front of the museum

“We wanted not just to represent, but to create a means for a multiplicity of voices to come together. The logo celebrates the richness of the BMA community. The logo becomes more legible when the marks overlap and join together, and there is strength and beauty in the cacophony of hand marks.”

from the BMA announcement of their new identity

Project team: Bruce Willen, Roy Rub, Seth Labenz, Clair Zimmerman, Brian Anderson, Nolen Strals
Collaborators: BMA (Melanie Martin, Lindsey Lang)

The Chairs
The Voxel Theater