Leeds Museums & Galleries is a family of nine popular visitor attractions. The group preserves, maintains and operates museums, country houses, heritage sites and galleries with the mission of educating, entertaining and inspiring the people of Leeds and beyond.
Leeds Museums & Galleries is the largest local authority-run museum service in England. They required a fresh strategy for how the organisation was seen — moving away from the ordinary, towards a more spirited and bold future. As part of a 2 year project we set about rebranding the nine individual sites and the parent brand.
As the sites have very different offerings and audiences, it was decided that each attraction should have its own unique brand — the only thing which connects them is the typographic approach. Leeds Museums and Galleries then sits above them as the umbrella brand.
Connecting people & places.
The master brand was based around ‘connecting people & places’. A graphical container device is used to connect and protect typography and imagery. A muted colour scheme is used for a contemporary look that works alongside all of the individual identities. The chosen typeface is then used as a secondary typeface across the sub brands as a touch of continuity — so object labels and marketing material have a familiar feel.
We created a marketing campaign to coincide with the launch of the new brand. Our concept was born from one astounding fact — that there are over 1.3million objects displayed or in preservation throughout the group. The image-led creative picked out the weird and the wonderful, the minute and the massive — showing that with so much on offer, there is always something to inspire and amaze visitors at one of the 9 attractions.
We worked with the individual sites to create a family of typography led brands. Other than this subtle element, there was no desire to blatantly link each site to the next — this had been the previous approach, but it had resulted in forced identities that did not capture the character of each place. Some elements were interweaved throughout — such as the secondary typeface — but otherwise, each attraction has their own unique set of assets and colours.
Related projects:
—Leeds Art Gallery
—Leeds City Museum
—Lotherton
—Temple Newsam
—Kirkstall Abbey