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 imprecise reminiscence of a college journey a long time in the past. Ask them in regards to the museum tucked inside it, and you will probably draw a clean solely. That is the nub of the issue model consultancy Wiedemann Lampe was handed. A 72-hectare website collectively owned by Ealing and Hounslow councils, filled with heritage buildings, sports activities amenities, group gardens and a very good native historical past museum, but nearly no person exterior the rapid space knew the museum existed in any respect.
It is the form of transient that is easy in principle however devilishly difficult in observe. You are not launching one thing new; you are making an attempt to make a 100-year-old place legible to individuals who’ve walked previous it their entire lives with out registering what’s there. And also you’re doing it for 2 issues which are administratively, financially and experientially distinct, but bodily inseparable. Specifically, a park and a museum sharing a gate, an internet site and—till now—a quite 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 additionally 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, but it surely solves an issue that journeys up a variety of shared-site rebrands: the temptation to design one id and hope it flexes convincingly for 2 very totally 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, govt artistic director and co-founder at Wiedemann Lampe, frames the problem as one among development: the organisation’s crew and ambitions had expanded, and the model wanted to catch up. Given how usually “development” will get used as advertising and marketing wallpaper in these bulletins, it is pleasing right here it is tied to one thing concrete: a small, community-interest firm (Gunnersbury Property CIC) making an attempt to punch above its weight with restricted assets.
Swerving the clichés
The strategic concept underpinning all that is “Life’s Wealthy Tapestry”, a phrase that might simply have collapsed into stock-photo blandness (smiling multicultural households, golden-hour park photographs, the standard). As a substitute, Wiedemann Lampe appears to have clocked that danger and actively designed towards it.
The images 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 quite than a set set of hero photos. That is a sensible little bit of futureproofing, and arguably probably 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 maintain including to its personal visible vocabulary as programming adjustments, with out ever needing to fee an entire new marketing campaign from scratch. The Gunnersbury 100 anniversary mark, sitting alongside the principle id quite than changing it, is an efficient demonstration of how that flexibility performs out in observe.
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 is perhaps lacking the nice bit solely. Wiedemann Lampe’s response avoids the plain lure of over-directing guests.
Quite 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 essential one for any place-branding mission: wayfinding that empowers exploration reads very in a different way to wayfinding that herds individuals. Given Gunnersbury’s ambition to be seen as an inclusive, communal house, that appears like the appropriate name. And it is backed by sensible pondering too, with the system constructed to roll out in phases as price range permits, quite than demanding a single, costly big-bang set up.
David Bowler, chief govt of Gunnersbury Museum and Park, talks in regards to 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 tougher check comes later: whether or not that assured yellow signage truly will get extra individuals 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 brand, however permission to lastly take up house.
