Corp ID: Museum Rebrand
3 min readJan 26, 2022
Response to The Whitney Rebranding
- In viewing The Whitney’s rebranding, I feel like the designers accomplished their goal of implementing a minimalistic, European design into the rebrand. I think that this new identity allows the museum’s art collection to do the talking for the brand. By remaining simple, it doesn’t try to compete for your attention, something that other museums like MOMA also do successfully.
- Responsive design is work that, in the case of the Whitney’s Identity release reel, is dynamic and has an animated quality to it. This works very well in settings like websites, videos, and looking at a product line as a set. However, it loses its quality of dynamism when viewed on an individual basis, like on a single business card or pamphlet.
- The Whitney’s rebranding is absolutely simple but I wouldn't consider it boring. As a museum of American art, it’s expected to cover a wide variety of experiences, viewpoints, and artforms. The simplistic design allows it to be overarching. Also, I feel like the clean B&W sans serif aesthetic is one that has become very popular in the last 20 years. A similar brand identity comes to mind in American Apparel, whose iconic advertisement style rose to prominence around the same time as the Whitney’s rebranding.
For my museum rebrand I chose to do The Spy Museum in Washington DC!
The Museum’s mission statement: “The Museum’s mission is to educate the public about espionage and intelligence in an engaging way. It provides a context for understanding the important role intelligence has played in history and continues to play today.”
The Museum was opened in 2002 in the Penn Quarter neighborhood in D.C. and has since moved into its own building in L’Enfant Plaza in 2019.
Some objects in their collection:
