The Ropeworks Museum needs a single, unified graphic system for its permanent exhibition inside a listed former rope factory. The system must work standing up, in poor light, in four languages, and must survive being extended by a volunteer long after the studio has left the building.
Overview & Goals
- Design one coherent visual system that covers the entrance panel, wall texts, object labels, floor numbers and the leaflet
- Make every text legible standing at 1.5 metres in low ambient light
- Build a label template and rule set robust enough for a non-designer to extend correctly
- Respect the listed building: no fixings to brick, everything rail-hung or self-standing
Budget & Timeline
The design system is agreed in September, giving roughly six weeks to develop before all artwork is finalised and handed to the fabricator by mid-November. Production and installation then run through the winter, ahead of the exhibition opening in February.
Print production
- Logo files
- Vector file (SVG, AI, EPS or PDF)
- What exactly
- A complete exhibition graphics system: one 3 x 2 m introduction panel, 14 wall texts of about 200 words, roughly 120 object labels in three sizes, floor numbers for the route, and a four-language A5 leaflet. Plus the templates and the written rules a volunteer uses to make label 121.
Target Audience
Museum visitors moving through a dim, historic industrial space, reading standing up rather than seated, and needing the story told in four languages rather than one.
Style
Typography
Chosen
- The Ropeworks MuseumNeutral & functional · GrotesqueExample typeface: Inter. A starting point, not a requirement.
Colour
New color direction
Warm & inviting
Terracotta, amber and sand. Feels human and hospitable.
Examples of the mood. The final colors are part of the job.
In the client's own words
We are a small museum in a former rope factory, opening a permanent exhibition about the building and the people who worked in it. What we need does not have a name in any design list we have looked at: the wall texts, the object labels, the numbers on the floor, the leaflet in four languages, and the one large introduction panel at the entrance. It has to be one system, it has to be readable by somebody standing up in poor light, and a volunteer has to be able to produce a new label when an object moves.
Scope & Deliverables
- Large entrance introduction panel
- Series of wall texts
- Object label system in three sizes
- Floor number wayfinding for the visitor route
- Four-language A5 leaflet
- Templates and written rules for volunteer-made labels
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Set wall text at a size readable standing 1.5 metres away in poor light
- Give volunteers a template they cannot break
- Keep the system unified across panel, wall text, labels, floor numbers and leaflet
- Design for rail-hanging or free-standing fixings only
Don't
- Do not use a light typeface on a dark ground for anything longer than a heading
- Do not design a label that depends on a photograph
- Do not fix anything to the original brick
- Do not build a system that only the studio can maintain