creative function

Khalili Collection

Branding - Identity - Design - Brochure - Web Design - Delivery

By Paul Maley - August, 2015

"Over the course of five decades, Professor Sir Nasser D. Khalili has assembled eight of the world’s finest art collections - each on its own merit being the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. Together, the eight collections comprise some 35,000 magnificent works, many of which have been exhibited at prestigious institutions worldwide."

 

Working with my digital colleges over at Nocturnal Cloud, we were asked to develop a brand for Sir Khalili's art collection. After meeting Sir Khalili and his art curator team it was agreed that the brand should feel accessible to everyone in a friendly more contemporary way but still maintain an anchor to the cultural history of most of the collection and Sir Khalili's own childhood background.

 

The Brand

 

Pulling on the rich cultural history and Islamic patterns, I wanted to create a brand that would do much much more than just look nice and catch the eye. So I set about looking as Islamic designs and patterns found within some of his collection. I felt looking deeper at the patterns they was a lot of symmetrical shapes which got me thinking "What if the brand could break down into sections to represent the eight separate collections?"

So I set about finding 8 pointed pattern's and after finding my inspiration, I took to tweaking the shape further into more of a map location pointer style to also allow the brand to double up as a navigation system for live events and exhibitions.

Website

 

Using this breakdown of brand elements, we looked into structuring the website into collections using the designated colour for each category. Below is a rough mock up of the proposed design system.

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