Natural History Museum
of Venice

Brand Identity Typography Website

Fall 2021 | Venice Study Abraod

Researched and analyzed the Natural History Museum of Venice to capture characteristics of the museum’s collections and emphasize details such as texture and shape. Designed the logo, brand identity, website, merchandise, and typographic pattern for the packaging.

Each logo contains characteristic of some of the collections at the NHM of Venice:
1. Dinosaur skeleton 2. Fossil 3. Clam’s shell

WEBSITE

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎
Explore the website

TIP)
1. Click through the landing page carousel
2. Scroll down the page when you return to the first carousel image
3. Click thorugh arrows to learn about the museum, view the poster etc.

IDEATION AND PROCESS

Originally known as, MSN:
Museo di storia naturale

Located next to the grand canal in Venice, Italy, this natural history museum was initally built in 1381 to house Museo Correr’s collections until it became the natural history museum in 1923.

When I visited the museum, I noticed some of its current issues with the brand, despite its strength of owning extensive amount of collections.

Issues to tackle

Issue 1: Unoriginal & inconsistent branding

MSN follows the MUVE foundation’s brand identity, which includes unoriginal typeface and logo. Its website doesn’t follow a consistent color palette as well.

Issue 2: Low accessibility for tourists

All museum collections is described only  in Italian. As a visitor, I had difficulty understanding what each collection was and following the map for directions.

Issue 3: Weak logo design

MSN’s current logo, which is set in a horizontal view, is too long. Meanwhile, the  shortened logo does not capture the museum’s  identity despite the addition of a bird illustration.

Goal of Rebranding

To appear more accessible and appealing to non-Italian audience/ tourists

LOGO DEVELOP

Capturing the details

The challenge of designing the logo came from how to best capture the characteristic of the musuems’s collections and their dertails, such as texture and shape.

While trying to tackle this challenge, I found inspiration from an examplary branding case study of the Jewish Musuem in NYC, by &Walsh studio. The brand’s custom typeface was based on the sacred geometry from the Star of David and the pattern with the word “Shaloms” wonderfully resonated the museum’s topic.

As my solution for the Natural History Museum of Venice, I decided to design three different types of logo using the acroynym “NHM”, to be concise and more recognizable by the tourists. Using a custom typeface, the three logos contain characteristics of...

1. Dinosaur skeleton
2. Fossil
3. Clam’s shell