2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is Canada’s largest museum, a world-renowned institution of art, culture and natural history. Its expansive collections with over 13 million artifacts were simply not enough to appeal to a more diverse and younger audience anymore.

The campaign’s objective was to jolt and overhaul every touchpoint of the museum, to help transform ROM into a dynamic presence for the 21st century.

Their design challenge was to convey the enormous scale of ROM’s collecTIons — objects dating from prehistoric civilizations to modern art — in a distinct brand identity that could encompass it all. It had to possess a bold and contemporary energy to attract new audiences, while possessing the longevity to be timeless. It had to be designed in a way that it could house an impressive range of content from different cultures and time periods. And it needed to be adaptive to work across every touchpoint and hundreds of applications — from museum signage to wayfinding, uniforms to collateral, editorial to high-impact advertising.

The new visual identity of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) captures the history of their planet. Thirteen million moments in time — bones, beasts, butterflies, portraits, sculptures, textiles, art, culture, nature — from the past 4.2 billion years.

Each object, each artifact, and each piece of art is like a single stitch along the vast timeline of their shared history.

The rebrand includes a new wordmark, custom typeface, original photography, and an adaptive design system that was applied across signage, wayfinding, collateral, uniforms, merch, editorial, and advertising.

Key to this visual identity was the creation of a new custom typeface — ROM Coign — designed to evoke the timeline. This typeface pushes the absolute limits of condensed typography, with every character representing a single stitch in time, all knit together in one immortal timeline. Designed to expand and contract, it can create the sensation of diving into single moments of their collective history, and then pulling back to reveal its immense scope.

As part of the brand launch, they introduced ROM’s identity with a full OOH Union Station domination, featuring custom photography with over 100+ objects and artifacts in a dynamic timeline.

A launch event installation where the timeline was projected onto the walls of the museum itself, enveloping attendees in the stories and making them feel like a living part of the immortal timeline.

A reimagined ROM magazine. The spine was even designed so that when stacked on shelves, the magazines would echo the timeline itself.

On their own, each piece acted as a single moment in their history. When seen together, they represented the whole tapestry of their stories. Sold in the museum, visitors could go home with their very own piece of this immortal timeline.

A Brand Health study was conducted to understand ROM’s brand awareness, perception, and brand health. Unaided, ROM saw an uptick as a top-of-mind venue with family and friends, indicating positive efforts for its new branding strategy and visual identity. Annual admissions also increased from 456K+ (June 2021-May 2022) to 1M (June 2022-May 2023), a year-over-year increase of 119%, indicating positive efforts in the brand’s refresh, programming, and special exhibitions
to draw in visitors.

ROM’s visual identity has revitalized and brought a fresh energy into the museum. It has created a new heartbeat in the city, resonating with art/culture lovers with its continual transformation.

Credits

Agency: Leo Burnett, Toronto
Client: Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)

Creative Agency: Leo Burnett, Toronto
President: Ben Tarr
Chief Creative Officers: Lisa Greenberg, Steve Persico
Managing Director, Account Services: Natasha Dagenais
Chief Strategy Officer: Tahir Ahmad
VP, Group Creative Director, Design: Man Wai Wong
Design Director: Marcelo Hong
Designer: Eric Espinosa Iracheta
Designer: Ryan Abrams
Junior Designer: Tatjana Dudas
Motion Designer: Yar Kukhtin
VP, Group Director: Kim Le
Account Director: Yvonne Li
Account Supervisor: Kate Owczar
Account Executive: Lauren Clancy

Photography:
Photographers: Mike Tjioe, Saty + Pratha

Typography:
Type Foundry: Colophon Foundry

Print Production:
VP, Post and Print Production: Gord Cathmoir
Print Producer: Kevin Stephen
Senior Graphic Artist: Graham Bowman
Pre-Press Technician: Shahid Qureshi
Production Manager: Bill Ing
Retoucher/Digital Artist: Bill Hastings

Video Production:
Executive Producer: Janice Rebelo
Senior Developer: Dan Purdy
Junior Motion Editor: Leah Fellows