MUSEUM OF TOMORROW - signage

creative director of signage concept and design

LOCATION:  Porto Maravilha, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Building designed by Santiago Calatrava.

DURATION: Permanent. Opened on December 19, 2015. 

VISITORS: 500,000 people in first 5 months.

CLIENT: Roberto Marinho Foundation.

ROLE: I was the creative director of the signage project. I led the design team and work closely with the different fabricators during fabrication and installation. The project was developed by ORB, a studio which I founded and am the creative director.

TEAM: Sean Callen: senior graphic design and art direction / Coca Albers: graphic design.

The museum building designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava expands along a pier entering the Guanabara Bay. Its interior features grand spaces, concrete white curved walls and large glass openings that fill the spaces with natural light and provide views onto the city and the Bay. It is a monumental, pristine, symmetrical building.

The signage and wayfinding system for the building was conceived and designed in dialogue with the building identity. To create contrast with its white spaces, all signage and wayfinding is black and dimensional. All pictograms are circular to relate to the building's curved organic surfaces. The signage system is in Portuguese, English and Spanish, as well as the rest of the museum program and content. Prominence is given to Portuguese signage using larger dimensional typography and pictograms in black corian, while English and Spanish text appears smaller underneath Portuguese and is applied in laser cut black vinyl. The typography used is Caliber and all pictograms were exclusively designed for the museum.