Visual Identity of the Year 2020
The story behind our Visual Identity of the Year
The Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires is a public institution created in 1956 that has remained a cutting-edge museum. Today its collection includes more than 7,000 works of modern and contemporary Argentine and international art from the 20th and 21st centuries.
After its last expansion and remodelling in 2018, it covers 4,000 m2, dedicated both to exhibiting its heritage and to presenting temporary exhibitions of national and foreign artists. Nestled in the traditional and tourist neighbourhood of San Telmo, to the south of the city of Buenos Aires, the museum is somewhat geographically removed from the busiest art circuits. Most of the commercial galleries, museums and other exhibition spaces, both public and private, are located in neighbourhoods in the centre and north of the city, such as Recoleta or Palermo. Even with the region's most important collection of modern and contemporary art, the museum must make a superior communication effort to achieve visibility and notoriety on this map.
Thus, the museum called on Gorricho Diseño to work on the visual communication of the institution. The first months of work were devoted to an extensive survey, a stage of in-depth investigations that would account for the actual situation of the museum, how it was perceived and how it was imagined, desired. In this first stage, members from all sectors of the museum were interviewed –from management to education, design, curatorship and conservation – as well as external art and culture leaders, such as directors or curators of other museums or artists with diverse backgrounds. In addition, a virtual survey was carried out of almost 400 visitors to the museum and a guided survey of the museum's collection - both the one exhibited and the one that remains in internal archives - was undertaken to understand its peculiarities and value. Likewise, the archive material of the museum's historical communications, such as programs and books, which were kept in the entity's library, was surveyed, digitised and organised.
This extensive analysis offered a clearer picture of the situation of the museum and its communication. Finally, the first stage concluded with the identification of the main problems to be solved, the definition of a clear strategic profile that would align communication, and the agreement of a series of objectives to advance with the development of a new visual identity. With a very important collection and the unique ability to produce and curate its own exhibitions with the highest standards and with innovative and stimulating proposals beyond the exhibition itself, the museum was failing to realize its real value to a community that perceived it as more distant and static than it was.
The first idea that this project went through was the development of a typeface for the museum that would give it a unique voice. The fact that modern design and contemporary design were also part of the museum's heritage - which keeps its own collection - gave even more meaning to the creation of a typeface of its own and of national origin. For its creation, Marcela Romero, Héctor Gatti and Pablo Cosgaya of the prestigious Omnibus-Type were summoned, with whom we worked collaboratively for several months. The first printed document from the museum that is recorded uses a Futura typeface, geometric, without serif. The premise for this design was to recover that original voice of the museum but update it and thus bring it closer to the current profile of the institution.
What happened to that typeface in these almost 70 years of the museum's life? How was it transformed? In the search for its unique character, the criterion for rethinking typography was the museum's own collection: thus, the geometric deconstructions of works by Emilio Pettoruti or Tomás Maldonado; explorations of gestural, subversive typefaces from works by León Ferrari or Mirtha Dermisache; and Gregorio Vardanega's alterations of time and form found their translation into typographical gestures.
The result was an intermediate weight geometric typeface, specially designed for titling, inspired by artistic movements from the first half of the 20th century and crossed by the imprint of the museum's collection. It presents alternative characters of some letters and signs that provide special uniqueness. Called MuseoModerno, it is a free and free-to-use licence font which allows those who wish to do so to download it and use it totally free in teaching situations or in professional jobs.
The new typography, MuseoModerno, became the most significant sign of the new identity system. The new primary signs of identity –logotype and symbol– are closely related to the font specially designed for this museum. The museum begins to have a visual story that singles it out and achieves cut-through in the universe of brands and organisations in the region. The museum's new identity design allows it to align its communication with the organisation's real profile. The new brand leaves behind some extreme correction and begins to make visible not only the scale of the museum but also its vibrant, stimulating and bold character.
The Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, with this brand, begins to account for its real value.
