To develop the brand identity for the future Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the museum has teamed up with graphic design studio Wkshps in collaboration with Once-Future Office.

Wkshps is at the forefront of thinking through the complex communications ecosystem of contemporary museums and cultural institutions, championing an experimental and generous approach to graphic design to engage more meaningfully with audiences. Their clients include the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, SALT, and SculptureCenter.

Together, Wkshps and Once-Future Office apply a collaborative method for complex design commissions such as this one, which led them to work in close dialogue with the museum’s staff, board, and strategic planning committee. With our architectural partners at OMA in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, they are also designing the museum’s new wayfinding and signage.

Our new identity system, which will be fully implemented upon our campus opening in the first half of 2023, grew out of the graphic design team’s comprehensive discovery process—including multiple visits to Buffalo in order to understand the past, present, and future Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The emphasis on a compact, dynamic, and context-specific logomark is forward-thinking, yet its elegant graphic system with a custom typeface by Christian Schwartz from Commercial Type remains rooted in the institution’s bold, modernist legacy. The flexible, distinctive logomark thrives on an attention to language and punctuation, inviting engagement and conversation with the multiple communities we serve.

This video, created by Wkshps as a preview of the new graphic identity, playfully approaches our new institutional acronym.

The new brand identity, wayfinding, and signage system for the Buffalo AKG Art Museum is designed by Wkshps with Once-Future Office.

A newly commissioned custom typeface is drawn by Christian Schwartz at Commercial Type.

Identity trailer is conceptualized and designed by Wkshps, with original music composed by TML.