Order designs a modular, adaptable and scalable identity system for New York's MoMA

In the Autumn of 2019, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, or MoMA for short, expanded its 53rd Street location with a new 40,000 sqft gallery space. It will showcase more of its unparalleled collection and also put a new emphasis on performance pieces.

The Museum approached local design office Order to evolve its identity into a more modular, adaptable and scalable design system to fit with its expansion and move away from exhibition-focused campaigns towards a seasonal Spring-Summer-Fall programme. Order conducted an initial audit of brand assets and recommended streamlining the expression of the core MoMA mark to a single application. The updated PS1 and Design Store logos complete the base elements of the system as brand extensions of MoMA’s singular institutional mark, which is now consistently embedded within each location’s identity.

The MoMA logo and bespoke typeface MoMA Sans, whose updated versions were drawn by Commercial Type in 2017, are refined interpretations of Franklin Gothic, the typeface used by the Museum since the 1930s.

Order has introduced a modular identity system that combines text, moving or still image and messaging into large compositions that can scale, move, and grow based on any format. The result is a design system that works for a single event or full seasonal exhibitions and campaigns.

The newspaper and banner advertising, façade signage, tickets and brochures were designed by MoMA Design Studio following the new system.

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MoMA