Brighton & Hove Museums & Libraries
Challenge
With 17 libraries and 7 museums, the city of Brighton & Hove has a varied range of venues and services, fulfilling many different needs and interests.
They range from local, community-based libraries to the internationally renowned Royal Pavilion, and Foredown Tower complete with camera obscura to the city’s modern and impressive Jubilee Library and the Booth Museum of Natural History housing over half a million specimens.
So how do you connect 24 cultural venues to create one united brand and cross promote the venues?
Idea
Our identity makes reference to both the domes of the Royal Pavilion and the open pages of books. In this way, we united the two related areas of museums and libraries.
The new brand effectively links the 24 venues, allowing each site to inform visitors about the other destinations. This means that visitors to the bigger and better known venues are now made aware of some of the city’s hidden gems. Their communication is no longer unilateral but as part of a clearly branded family.
We translated the brand across literature, promotional materials, interiors, website and signage, providing guidelines to show how the identity works across a diverse range of venues.
Response
This project represented a delicate balance – how to bind together 24 venues into one brand, yet still allow individual appeal to shine through.
Importantly, initial workshops helped us get closer to visitor motivations. Consequently, our cross promotion philosophy was one of pertinent suggestion and gentle persuasion, rather than overt selling. In our experience, visitors tend to respond better to bright ideas and well made connections: that feeling of personal discovery rather than being ‘told’.