Brand Refresh for Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography
A visual identity transforming the museum experience
Since adopting its new identity by our Design Studio in 2019, Huis Marseille has become more visually cohesive while preserving its intimate character. Extending into 2025, the latest refresh aimed to evolve the exhibition design system — introducing a more contemporary, flexible framework that could adapt to varied content while staying true to the museum’s refined visual identity. The challenge was to strike a balance between innovation and continuity.
Exhibition Design
The museum’s exhibition design language was reimagined while maintaining consistency with its core brand assets. This approach continues to use the Huis Marseille logo and brand typeface (Garnett by Sharp Type), but the typography is now expressed in a more conceptual manner – creating a distinct identity that reflects the theme of each show. This design system has been rolled out across out-of-home campaigns, social films, exhibition signage, and invitations.
The approach respects the individuality of each exhibition while reinforcing the museum’s collective identity - a space where visual culture is not only displayed but reinterpreted with each new exhibition.
What makes this work impactful is its ability to strike a rare balance between consistency and creative freedom. At the heart of the design system lies a flexible typographic framework that allows each exhibition to assume its own visual character while maintaining a clear connection to the Huis Marseille brand
By building flexibility into the system, the design remains dynamic and adaptable. It gives the brand space to evolve over time, ensuring continued relevance in a shifting cultural landscape. Rather than relying on a fixed visual language, this future-proofed approach empowers the museum to continuously reimagine how it presents itself – keeping the brand fresh without compromising its core integrity.
The refreshed system has since been implemented across many major exhibitions, including Michella Bredahl: Rooms We Made Safe and Memento: Photography, Interrupted, which celebrated the museum’s 25th anniversary.
Brand Awareness
Often described as a ‘hidden gem’, Huis Marseille surprises visitors with its intimate atmosphere and stunning spaces behind a modest facade. Just as the exhibitions captivate audiences, we set out to make the museum experience equally compelling.
The museum itself becomes a living composition — where atmosphere and art intertwine.
This city-wide brand refresh shifts the focus from the artworks themselves to the act of encountering them within the museum’s unique environment. By highlighting the building’s sensory qualities – the play of light, the textures of walls, the rhythm of its architecture – the work invites audiences to see the museum as a living composition, making the atmosphere as integral to the experience as the art on display.
The creative approach for this project centered on revealing fragments rather than the full picture. Think details, surfaces, and glimpses that suggest more than they show. This visual restraint sparks curiosity, allowing visitors to imagine their own version of the space.
Photographer Sarah van Rij brought this sensibility to life through cinematic compositions and a precise sense of atmosphere. The campaign unfolded across Amsterdam through an out-of-home print campaign, supported by social films and large-scale projections.