Responses by Simon Chong, creative director and Galla Barrett, senior strategist, Gretel
Background: Our job was to build a campaign framework that draws attention to the seasonal moments of change in the collection galleries at The Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA. It needed to reflect the new behavior of the institution, essentially a new curation strategy rooted in opening up the collection to show more of the 20,000 plus works and broaden the narratives they tell. Part of the intent behind this strategy was to draw in New Yorkers and members of the museum, who typically don’t visit the museum as frequently because they’ve assumed that they’ve seen it all.
The new campaign needed to signal that there is something new on view in the collection galleries every season, and, with every visit, to instill the desire to come in again and again. The key components of the campaign included a name for the rotation moment and a messaging and identity framework that says MoMA and maintains the freshness and dynamism of the cyclical rotation event over time.
Reasoning: We anchored the campaign framework in the name of the event itself: Reveal, which describes what’s happening inside galleries and captures the experience for the visitor at the same time. Visually, the campaign builds on MoMA’s existing core design system and reflects the physical experience viewers will have in the refreshed galleries: new works at every turn. Rotating blocks provide a metaphor for change mirroring the behavior of the collection as new works are swapped in every six months.
Challenges: We spent time crystalizing what it was that we were naming so we could get clear on the intent behind the name—both for what it needed to do shortly after the museum’s reopening and in a couple years from now. We wanted the name to capture the novel curatorial approach to the collection as well as the seasonality of the collection itself. Ultimately, we were able to fold that approach in with visitors’ desire to discover new art and be inspired.
Favorite details: The name and visual identity both clearly express the visitor’s experience of being able to discover something new with every visit, and at every turn.
Visual influences: The visual identity was based on MoMA’s core design system. Through the addition of the rotating blocks, the campaign was able to take something familiar and surprise with the new.
Anything new: Due to the restrictions in cropping artwork, our system was built to allow the flexibility to accommodate any artwork at any ratio.
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