Brand Campaign - Nxt Museum

Brand campaign created for new media art institute Nxt Museum in Amsterdam.

Background: Since opening in 2019, Nxt Museum followed a campaign strategy of using as many high impact visuals as possible. While the museums large scale artworks initially worked well in attracting visitors, after a few years of following this plan, more and more ‘immersive spaces’ opened in the city and soon the image of a person standing in a projection space lost it’s artistic integrity. Gradually the public started to see this imagery is a signifier for an ‘immersive experience’ rather then ‘art’.

The strategy also meant that the Nxt Museum brand didn’t have many clearly identifiable elements - campaigns were more adverts for artists then the museum itself.

Brief: Create a new campaign style for the museum that incorporates a developed brand identity and messaging that will tie the museum closer to the art world - while still making artists work a key feature of all campaigns.

Approach: With the campaign stretching to all forms of digital and physical media, we needed to create something that was flexible to use and also eye catching for different viewer durations. This lead us to see that colour would be a key element to use in the campaign.

We decided on digital blue as it has so many connotations to the art world, with references to Yves Klein and 'Girl with the Pearl Earring’. Digital blue also has a strong connection to technology, with the classic Microsoft crash screen and with the RGB colour spectrum that can only be achieved digitally.

The colour made sense from many perspective, especially when comparing them to the competition in the Amsterdam museum space. Moco museum uses pink, Van Gogh uses yellow, and Heart uses red - so we digital blue was a colour Nxt could really own.

In terms of copy, we wanted to create something short, recognisable and ultimately had strong reference to the art world. We ideated on the concept of asking the public ‘How do you define art?’ A open ended question that made people consider if technology could really be art, ultimately inviting people to visit the museum to test their hypothesis.

Finally, the animation style was created specifically with the short ad times available online and in OOH locations in the city. The animation system worked so that every 3 seconds, the information would rotate colour/message, creating a easy to use system that could be applied to all forms of media.

Assets: The campaign ran as a full digital and physical OOH throughout the Netherlands.