Responses by Johanna Drewe, creative director; Jens Meijer, lead developer; and Bahar Shahidi, senior strategist, Studio Output.

Background: “The singular mission of the Museums Association is ‘to inspire museums to change lives,’” says Bahar Shahidi. “But its roles are multiple: a campaigning body, a membership organization, a publication, a host for events and conferences, and a tool for finding jobs, objects and suppliers. The website’s purpose is to support all of that, and its audience is anyone who works in museums from the front desk to the curators and researchers.”

Design core: “The Museums Association was established in 1889, so there is a lot of authority and heritage within the brand,” says Johanna Drewe. “It also has a large group of existing members who are very engaged. Both needed to be respected.

“On the other hand, the organization didn’t feel part of a modern landscape,” Drewe continues. “Although the Museums Association writes content that’s incredibly relevant to conversations happening now, such as decolonizing and dismantling racism in museums, the site and brand didn’t reflect this progressive content. We needed to make the site feel alive with a sense of ongoing activity, accommodate the volume of content, and present users with an engaging brand and site experience to reflect the organization’s progressive approach.”

Favorite details: “One outtake from the brief was: ‘Museums are not about buildings and objects. They are spaces to have your perceptions challenged and your ideas broadened.’ We really wanted to bring this sentiment to life through the visual identity and weave it seamlessly through the off and online brand,” says Drewe. “We introduced a subtle keyline frame that moves in and out of view, bringing offset images, color and typography together while allowing them to break free. This showcases different perspectives, suggesting that nobody ever sees the full picture.”

Navigation structure: “We had to ensure users were aware of the full scope of the Museums Association’s roles and what it has to offer,” says Shahidi. “Navigation played a big part in supporting that and clarifying the offering. The previous navigation was cluttered and confusing, and didn’t support user needs. We streamlined it so that users could quickly find what they wanted.

“We also knew that membership—and the free entry to museums offered as part of that—is a core reason for users coming to the website,” Shahidi continues. “So this was promoted into the primary navigation.”

Divergent paths: “Data in the ‘Find a…’ sections is integrated using a CRM API, which presented some performance issues and limitations in supporting new features,” says Jens Meijer. “As an improvement, we’re now developing a microservice that ingests data in an asynchronous background process. The AI is independently deployable from the main website codebase using the Serverless framework.

“This also gives us full control over the data and lets us expose it back to the site in our own API,” Meijer further explains. “With additional features around search and asset serving, we can drastically improve the performance of our client’s data. It will also be easier to deploy, maintain and scale with the Museums Association’s needs going forward.”