With up to 400,000 visitors per year, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is one of the most important art museums in Germany. From 2014 to 2016, the building was extensively modernized during ongoing museum operations. For this communicative challenge, we developed a successful campaign strategy and subsequently the entire corporate design of the house from the ground up: from the appearance and the website to the modular guidance system.
Variable, systemic, distinctive: The new visual identity
As part of the modernization of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, it was important to renew the appearance as well. Our recipe for success: A balanced logotype that gives art the space it deserves in all media. A color spectrum that (just like art) includes the entire color palette. A new corporate typeface. And a four-step design principle that unites all elements and is applicable to all formats.
The Kunsthalle’s goal was to put its own communications to the test during the modernization and to say farewell to superfluous measures. In the process, a joint strategy process resulted in a communications concept that now concentrates on exhibitions and program highlights in print, while the extensive event program was shifted to digital communications.
Even a modular appearance needs clear guidelines. To ensure that other project partners of the museum also understand the enormous design freedom and its limits, we developed a comprehensive style guide for the Kunsthalle.
One of the largest online collections: The new website
The Kunsthalle approached us with the requirement to develop a contemporary, responsive and individually adaptable website. The result was a clearly structured website that also offers many expansion possibilities in the future, such as the digital collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which is continuously expanded with new works.
The arts are back: Hamburg Kunsthalle’s opening campaign
In the course of the reopening of the Hamburger Kunsthalle in April 2016, we developed the multimedia campaign ” The arts are back”. Famous paintings from the Kunsthalle were distributed across the city on billboards, on advertising pillars, in huge large and small formats. The campaign also used many channels on the web and was particularly successful on social media platforms.
With free admission and a diverse program of events, the Kunsthalle presented itself to its visitors at its best on its reopening. The interest in seeing the newly modernized rooms and the new collection hanging was so immense that the museum recorded more than 200,000 visitors in the first month.
Multi-layered and accessible: A guidance system for all levels
To help visitors find their way around the more than 12,000 square meters of exhibition space, we redeveloped the museum’s entire guidance system.
Exhibition design: “Open Access” and “Transparent Museum
With experimental exhibition formats, the Hamburger Kunsthalle has been taking alternative approaches to art education since its reopening in 2016. Thanks to our many years of experience in the development of information architectures and exhibition designs as well as our material competencies, we were able to successfully accompany the Kunsthalle in the planning and implementation of these concepts.
