As a part of research I looked into the client itself, the Baltic. Personally the I've visited the museum countless times on school trips and personal visits so I'm familiar with the building itself and that it used to be a flour mill but not so much the in depth knowledge of the museum. I wanted to learn the basics, history and identity of the the Baltic.
Situated on the south bank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, England, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art consists of 2,600 square metres of art space, making it the UK’s largest dedicated contemporary art institution. Its mission is to create exceptional access to important and innovative contemporary art in a unique setting, that encourages and enables learning and transformational thinking. Over the years it has gained an international reputation for its commissioning of cutting edge temporary exhibitions. It has presented the work of over 350 artists from over 50 countries in over 190 exhibitions to date. Since opening to the public in July 2002, Baltic has welcomed over 6 million visitors. The building itself was a industrial flour mill but the building was redeveloped with a new structure consisting of six main floors and three mezzanines, 3000sqm of arts space (four galleries and a flexible performance space), artists' studios, cinema/lecture space, shop, a library and archive for the study of contemporary art and the rooftop restaurant.
For visual research for the Baltic I firstly looked at the website to see what already exist in terms of digital visual identity. The website is stripped back, with a subtle minimal aesthetic that heavily relies on a basic black and white colour palette. When you use the drop down menu to see the other webpages the titles are presented to you in large uppercase type which is function-able. The website is responsive and very much so form follows function as its an enjoyable experience to use the website.
After extensively looking at the website, initial thoughts on the identity which I've been familiar with for many years now are that its a effortless identity which doesn't aim to take to much away from the exhibitions on show. Many museums and galleries go for this identity which lets the work on show speak for itself with subtle hints of the museums identity here and there. The original identity which includes the logo and custom made typeface which is by Henrik Nygren was designed in 1998, I think the typeface is similar to Din yet has more rounded and rough characteristics.
After Nygren designed the logo and typeface, Founded a Newcastle based studio took on all of the Baltic's visual output including exhibitions, marketing material, signage as well designing the identities for the shop, cafe and sister gallery Baltic 39. One of the studios challenges when producing work for the Baltic was connecting with the North East public and wider art audiences, they use language and humour for the Baltic's tone of voice to make it a 'cool brand'. The use of colour and typography is great as it allows consistency and can be applied to many variations of the Baltic's visual output.
A visit to the Baltic
For some first hand research I visited the Baltic to get an idea of the Baltic's identity including typefaces, colours, wayfinding and printed material that will inform the design of my ideas.
The use of Nygren's custom typeface which is similar to Din is heavily used throughout the Baltic's identity inside the building as its used for the main typeface throughout, for example the vinyl titling for each exhibition and the wayfinding, for the body copy such as the exhibitions descriptions and floor descriptions a sans serif grotesque typeface is used. In terms of colours used the Baltic sticks to a limited colour palette, infact each floor has a different colour scheme as shown on the image of the '3' with the orange painted walls so this shows a variation on each floor. When I was strolling throughout the Baltic one colour that was heavily used was a warm yellow, this is the one colour that comes across as a home colour along with black and white.
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