Ask most Londoners what’s inside Gunnersbury Park, and you will get a shrug, a point out of the boating lake, or, in the event you’re actually fortunate, a obscure reminiscence of a faculty journey a long time in the past. Ask them concerning the museum tucked inside it, and you will probably draw a clean fully. That is the nub of the issue model consultancy Wiedemann Lampe was handed. A 72-hectare website collectively owned by Ealing and Hounslow councils, full of heritage buildings, sports activities services, group gardens and a very good native historical past museum, but nearly no one outdoors the speedy space knew the museum existed in any respect.
It is the sort of temporary that is easy in concept however devilishly difficult in follow. You are not launching one thing new; you are attempting to make a 100-year-old place legible to individuals who’ve walked previous it their complete lives with out registering what’s there. And also you’re doing it for 2 issues which might be administratively, financially and experientially distinct, but bodily inseparable. Specifically, a park and a museum sharing a gate, a web site and—till now—a somewhat muddled sense of what both of them truly stood for.
Wiedemann Lampe’s reply was deceptively neat. Cease pretending the park and museum are one factor, but in addition cease pretending they’re two unrelated issues. Construct an id that may break up aside or snap collectively, relying on what’s being talked about, and let color do the heavy lifting.
The system hinges on two symbols: a tree for the park and a gabled constructing for the museum. Every is filled with small illustrated particulars (birds, palms, pottery, an eye fixed) that trace at what’s inside, with out over-explaining it.
Inexperienced belongs to the park, purple to the museum, and when the 2 mix, a punchy yellow takes over; the color that then carries straight by means of into the wayfinding indicators dotted across the grounds.
It is a easy piece of logic, nevertheless it solves an issue that journeys up lots of shared-site rebrands: the temptation to design one id and hope it flexes convincingly for 2 very completely different entities. As a substitute, Wiedemann Lampe constructed modularity in from the beginning.
The museum can promote an exhibition with out dragging the entire park alongside for the trip; the park can promote a summer time path with out leaning on the museum’s visible weight. And when the organisation needs to talk as a single entity, the yellow lockup does that job cleanly, with out both image getting swallowed.
Benji Wiedemann, government inventive director and co-founder at Wiedemann Lampe, frames the problem as one among progress: the organisation’s crew and ambitions had expanded, and the model wanted to catch up. Given how typically “progress” will get used as advertising wallpaper in these bulletins, it is pleasing right here it is tied to one thing concrete: a small, community-interest firm (Gunnersbury Property CIC) attempting to punch above its weight with restricted sources.
Swerving the clichés
The strategic concept underpinning all that is “Life’s Wealthy Tapestry”, a phrase that would simply have collapsed into stock-photo blandness (smiling multicultural households, golden-hour park pictures, the standard). As a substitute, Wiedemann Lampe appears to have clocked that threat and actively designed in opposition to it.
The pictures route favours intimate, human moments over panoramic vistas. In the meantime, the illustration suite, developed with artist Rebecca Sutherland, leans into specificity: seasons, wildlife, artefacts, cultural exercise, rendered as a versatile, rising library somewhat than a set set of hero pictures. That is a wise little bit of futureproofing, and arguably essentially the most helpful lesson right here for anybody engaged on heritage or civic identities.
A single hero illustration dates quick and locks an organisation into no matter second it was commissioned in. A modular illustration system, in contrast, lets Gunnersbury hold including to its personal visible vocabulary as programming adjustments, with out ever needing to fee a complete new marketing campaign from scratch. The Gunnersbury 100 anniversary mark, sitting alongside the primary id somewhat than changing it, is an effective demonstration of how that flexibility performs out in follow.
Anybody who’s tried to navigate a big, informally laid-out park will recognise the wayfinding downside immediately: too many paths, too few choices made for you, and a creeping sense that you just may be lacking the great bit fully. Wiedemann Lampe’s response avoids the plain lure of over-directing guests.
Moderately than dictating a single route by means of the positioning, the brand new yellow signage makes use of a transparent, icon-led construction to floor choices: the museum, the café, the sports activities hub, the closest station; all legible at a look, however the selection of the place to truly go stays with the customer.
It is a delicate distinction, however an necessary one for any place-branding undertaking: wayfinding that empowers exploration reads very in a different way to wayfinding that herds folks. Given Gunnersbury’s ambition to be seen as an inclusive, communal house, that appears like the correct name. And it is backed by sensible pondering too, with the system constructed to roll out in phases as finances permits, somewhat than demanding a single, costly big-bang set up.
David Bowler, chief government of Gunnersbury Museum and Park, talks concerning the rebrand “galvanising” a small crew, which is nearly as good a measure of success as any shopper testimonial can provide at launch stage. The more durable check comes later: whether or not that assured yellow signage truly will get extra folks by means of the gates who did not know there was a museum. For an organisation that is spent a century working quietly within the background, that is the actual ambition right here: not a nicer emblem, however permission to lastly take up house.
