Museum Branding - The Greatest Hits of Museum Branding

 V&A- Much like many other museum and gallery logos the V&A is made up of a abbreviated short version of the name Victoria & Albert Museum. The logo uses a clever use of an ampersand as the crossbar for the A, shortening the space it uses and keeping it concise and to the point.

Much like many art gallery logos it needs to be seen at many sizes in many colours and remain distinct.

The Centre Pompidou logo takes its inspiration from the iconic architectural structure of the building, this is a clear link from a physical thing that is recognisable to a logo that represents it.

The logo is dynamic and clear it can be used alone and with the type and it communicated clear enough.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has seen a few redesigns over the years, above we see Wim Crouwel's designs using  simple Helvetica typeface showing SM this became iconic of the museum and could be adapted and variated on and still represent the Stedelijk with no need for clutter.

The new logo is designed into the shape of an S, it has slightly less conviction yet is building a reputation and the supporting branding is distinct and fits the theme of a 'Dutch' Gallery.

MoMa - The iconic branding is in itself so simple, just using a lower case letter to represent the 'of' in Museum of Modern Art.
The reason it is so effective is the way it has been used and allowed to build up a reputation, as well as the pedigree of the gallery.

This simple graphic allows for many variations and uses. The image to the left shows it in situ and how it has been used to fill the whole space.

The Whitney Branding, designed by Dutch studio– Experimental Jetset.

A simple graphic at first glimpse the great thing about this logo is how it has been designed for such a large variety of implication. The W is movable to any shape of size and remains distinctive of the overarching branding.

The Musee d'Orsay, can once again be used with or without supporting type. The classical feeling of the Didot Type is very reflective of the content of more classical paintings.

We see again that a simple typographic solution with an abbreviation is used to represent a much longer word.

The always iconic Tate branding, uses a semi abstract dot matrix of type that can be abstracted more or less depending on the context.

The supporting typeface for the Tate is just as distinctive as the logo the rounded and condensed type is so recognisable as it is.






The Joan Miro Foundation logo uses a distinctive 'Joan Miro' style illustration that is recognisable to anyone that knows his work. The supporting type has the typical bold typography. All the designs seem to be mainly black and white for use in a range of contexts.

The Royal Academy of Arts Logo uses a combination of both Serif & San Serif typography, this connects the 'old school' nature of the building and its history. But keeps the museum's branding contemporary.




These 'Greatest Hits of Museum Brands' have been a large influence on why this project has been undertaken and the branding for the Museu Berardo should try at least to be as iconic and appropriate as these.