Manitoba Museum
Brand update breaks the mold for museums by focusing on immersive experiences and honouring every story.
The Story
The Manitoba Museum initially engaged Borealis to update their website to showcase the Museum’s authority, attractions, educational content and capabilities towards a diverse audience. An enhanced interactive e-commerce site that cussed on the visitor experience enabling increased sales and revenue was mandated. More importantly, the site was to be the platform to reflect the Museum’s mission and desire to be a premier destination providing high quality experiences. The Museum had also recently launched a new brand and visual identity which needed to be considered in the overall site design and user experience.
Deliverables
Visual Identity Refinements
Brand Toolkit and Guidelines
Campaign Development
Marketing Video
Communications strategy and Matrix
E-commerce Site
Research & Strategy
Borealis and our development partner, Digital Chaos, hosted multiple workshop sessions with key Museum stakeholders to determine pain points and technical limitations to help define the approach, audience user requirements and needs towards architecture, ticketing systems, promotions & CRM, shop and eCommerce, events & booking, accounting and finance, content and messaging. Once preliminary discovery audits were complete, and marketing and communication objectives set, user flows were defined to test and ultimately ensure an efficient visitor experience.
In advancing the IA, wireframes, UX and design stages, along with the Museum’s desire to increase overall brand reputation and awareness, the need to expand the Museum’s newly refined brand became apparent. Extending the brand into the new website with regards to sub brand alignment and value proposition messaging, had to be more fully considered.
A communications strategy was defined to imbue the Manitoba Museum brand (mission, vision, values, tone, persona, etc.) into the language and information architecture of the website while also setting a framework and standard for other branded communications work including marketing collateral, advertising, social and wherever the brand becomes codified.
Brand Solutions
The creative exercise that followed saw an expansion and elevation of the Museum’s brand toolkit including refinements towards colour, typography, design elements, imagery and photography usage, web page layout, collateral and merchandise design. The master brand logo was refined including variations. Brand architecture and hierarchies were explored for on and offline navigation purposes.
A communications platform based on an expressed central unifying idea was articulated and followed by a comprehensive messaging matrix designed to address key audience needs and priorities. This central unifying idea, or essence, now guides all Museum communication activities.
Creative Development
To enforce the Museum’s desire to be seen as breaking the mould of a typical museum, emotive words in bold typography communicate the richness and warmth of the Museum’s experience, while candid, authentic, striking imagery breaks the boundaries of typography with silhouettes and other focal points also breaking through their frames across all touchpoints. The M symbol in the identity becomes a vessel and gateway to the many diverse stories the Museum wishes to share and create connections with. Patterns created from Manitoba landscape topography provide added secondary texture and reinforce the heritage of the land, the movement and evolution of Manitoban’s and their stories. Digital and onsite advertising standards were developed to reflect the Museums bold vision and many exciting offerings.
The brand now benefits from a strong cohesive visual and verbal style. Recent launch and activations have yielded positive results resulting in increased ticket and membership sales.
