“The history behind the Garden Museum dates from the medieval era to the present day:

The Garden Museum was founded by Rosemary and John Nicholson in 1977 in order to rescue the abandoned church of St Mary’s at Lambeth, which was due for demolition. The church is the burial place of John Tradescant (c1570 – 1638), the first great gardener and plant-hunter in British history. His magnificent and enigmatic tomb is the centrepiece of the Sackler Garden, designed to reflect Tradescant’s life and spirit.”

-https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/the-museum/history/

 As an independent project during graduate school, I opted to tackle rebranding and expanding the identity of one of the largest museums of natural life in the United Kingdom, The Garden Museum, London. This project included the analysis and redesign of:

1. A new logotype
2. Maps
3. Typography and Color Palettes
4. Webpages and Layout Design
5. Stationery and Business Cards
6. Products: Mugs, Lanyards, and Catalogues
7. Advertising Material: Tickets and Signage

Analysis:

During my visit to The Garden Museum’s website, I was disappointed. They hold a modern and flat graphic style, which is very fashionable in this current day, however, it is not a highly effective design for their establishment.

1. The flat graphics style does not work with their content.
2. The website looks like a different organization from page to page — not cohesive.
3. No clear color scheme.
4. No clear style defined — features photography, flat graphics, illustrations and paintings.
5. Top banner with hours can be hard to read — keeps changing color and texture.
6. Good information — needs to be more well organize.

Color Palette:

To achieve a successful color palette, I have decided to embrace the unusual colors of spring in the Netherlands. 

By utilizing the inspiration of the immaculate poppies grown: deep blues, white and greys as the primary palette, utilizing accents of cadmium reds and yellows, bright blues, and rich greens, a lively and energized color palette is born.

Typography:

Logotype:

By changing the logotype to a more modern typeface with aterations, the Garden Museum would be brought in to the modern century and have the ablity to attract a new crowd. The font family used as a base is Raleway, designed by Pablo Impallari and Rodrigo Fuenzalida in 2012.

Map:

The original map was poorly designed and unreadable, so a redesign of a map was crucial for the completion of an effective rebranding strategy.

Graphics:

For my redesign of the website, I opted to utilize spring flowers and the colors of the Netherlands. Poppies were decided on because of their vibrant red hues and prominence through out Europe.

Webpage Redesign:

In the recreation of layout proposals, I created static images of some potential page layouts using a flat color style in high contrasting red and green, via Johannes Itten’s theories of Complimentary Contrast and Contrast of Saturation.

The home page features a rotating highlight reel, while the alternative pages feature collapsible highlight features.

Products:

Office Stationery and Business Cards:

Lightpost Banners:

Event Tickets and Museum Catalogue:

Sourvenirs: Lanyards and Mugs