Singapore Design Awards 2016

Communication: Branding (Gold)

The Challenge

Museum Label is the retail brand for Singapore’s museums, offering merchandise to appeal to both local and overseas visitors. The National Heritage Board wanted to extend its mandate and expand to off-site locations, prompting a review of its brand. The challenge was to understand the needs of the two main user groups and define what lies at the heart of Singapore and Asian heritage and identity for each, and to make it meaningful when taken in and out of the museum context.

The Insight

Through insights gathered in research, we learned that ‘memories’ formed an integral part of the museum and museum shop experience for both local and overseas visitors. This gave rise to a brand proposition centred on the idea of story-telling, providing rich inspiration for the creation of a new retail identity. This was anchored on a framing device that creates a context for the stories being told, linking directly to the museum experience. This was applied to a full range of brand graphics and a retail concept designed to bring heritage and memories to life. The challenge for implementation was to create a design framework that is identifiable and unifying, while allowing each museum to express its own unique identity, remaining authentic, tangible and accessible to locals and tourists alike.

The Impact

The Museum Label brand has since been re-launched with several new collections specially curated to express its new proposition. Museum Label has also collaborated with international partners to develop new merchandise, and launched pop-up stores to extend the reach of its brand, setting in place a journey for revitalisation.