With type that moves and dances, Resn designs the Sculpting Harmony exhibition to dramatic effect

Landing on the website of Sculpting Harmony – a digital exhibition that takes viewers inside the making of Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles – is both a visual and sonic treat. A bold, vivid typeface spells out the name of the exhibition, which dances to the crescendoing music of the LA Philharmonic. The exhibition by Getty, which marks the 20th anniversary of the concert hall, was designed by the New Zealand-based digital experience agency Resn to an arresting result.

The exhibition takes a deep dive into the layered history of the concert hall. Through a vast strove of Getty’s archival material, aerial photography, interactive 3D renderings, dramatic soundtracks by LA Phil, and narration by Gehry himself, Sculpting Harmony tells the story of how the hall was imagined and brought to life. “Our role in this project was to take the already curated collection by Getty and distil it into a coherent and engaging story for the exhibition,” says Design Director Bruno Arizio. The narrative flow of the exhibition mirrors the chronological way the building was designed, from the inside out. Audiences are first drawn into the interiors of the concert hall, and then led to the exteriors, which were built around it.

To root the typographic treatment in the story of the concert hall, the team at Resn looked back at the early ’90s, when Gehry began working on the project. “The typography and the colours are all reminiscent of that era,” Arizio tells us. “Our mood boards were filled with references from Alan Kitching, Paula Scher to Neville Brody; works that spanned through that decade.” While the team was influenced by that style, they were not looking to replicate it. “We didn’t want the project to feel like a time machine; instead, we wanted to create something new, vibrant and full of character,” he adds.

A sense of movement and interactivity was built into the design. As you scroll through the exhibition, type spills over the screen, edge-to-edge. Just a nudge of the mouse, and it’s quickly squished into a corner – without losing legibility – to make space for the story to flow. To allow for this choreography to unfold, the typeface had to be extremely flexible. A series of stress tests eventually led the team to Sharp Type’s Sharp Grotesk. “It had enough simplicity and versatility that allowed us to stretch the type in any way we wanted, without losing the integrity of its features,” Senior Designer Manvydas Kugis explains. “A good example would be the chapter title cards, where we purposefully stretched the titles to their extremes to give a clear and vibrant indication of a story change in the flow.”

The layout also had to cater to two distinct audience types – the broader public seeking a glimpse of history, and the more curious ones who would want to delve into details. “We devised a two-part mechanic for all chapters,” shares Arizio. “The first part utilises the familiar Instagram story model, allowing easy navigation through immersive videos and archival footage sequences. The second takes an editorial approach, offering a deeper behind-the-scenes dive, providing more context for the story.”

This meant that to both complement Sharp Grotesk’s dramatic proportions and also enable a smooth reading experience on screens, the team needed a robust supporting typeface. To do exactly this, they chose Reckless by Displaay to temper the funk of the titles, and bring “a more functional, serious tone to the dense editorials,” says Kugis.

Resn also injected moments of surprise into the experience of browsing through the exhibition. The introductory page on the website opens to a sketch of Gehry’s coming to life in real-time, stamping the project with the architect’s signature from the get-go. If you move your cursor around, you’ll notice a string of words trailing it, which upon further reading is revealed to be quotes by Gehry, pulled out from interviews which are packed into the exhibition. With its moments of pause, spikes of energy, and colours that change with each chapter, Sculpting Harmony’s design becomes a perfect foil for the boundary-pushing work of Gehry.

Resn

Sculpting Harmony