Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft to reopen with typography-led identity

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft is set to open next week, with new branding by Phil Baines and interiors designed by Adam Richards Architects.

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft branding, line text

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft branding, line text

The East Sussex museum, previously known just as Ditchling Museum, has been closed since early 2012.

Church View

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Church View

It will reopen with a new focus on the artists and craftspeople that lived and worked in the area, where an artist community was founded by Eric Gill in the early 20th Century, influenced by the earlier Arts and Crafts Movement that began in the 1860s.

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft
Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft

Baines, Professor of Typography at Central Saint Martins, says, ‘The feeling was with the museum that it was a little bit unfocused, and it should look to its core strengths, which is the art and craft community founded by Eric Gill, as well as wider art and craft, and not try and just be a local history museum. 

Exhibition graphics

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Exhibition graphics

The new branding is based on the work of artists in the collection. The main identity uses a typographic arrangement of the museum’s name, and exists in four different formats.

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft branding, block text

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft branding, block text

‘I wanted to do something typography-based rather than logo-based’, says Baines. ‘One of the earlier discussions was should we use Gill or not, but in the end I thought it would be churlish not to. Given the way I was setting out the words as a sort of pattern, Gill Sans worked perfectly’.

Forme

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Forme

Gill Sans’ ‘pre-digital’ incarnation is used throughout the museum identity in headings, with another Gill-designed typeface, Aries, used for body text due to its ‘good reading texture’, says Baines.

Baines was appointed to the project having worked with the museum for the last six or seven years, having set up a letterpress bequeathed by typographer and historian Justin Howes at the space.

Signage

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Signage

He also designed a catalogue for the museum’s Eric Gill show in 2007.

The restored museum will see the smaller spaces used for changing exhibitions, with a central space housing the permanent collection, where before the permanent collection was housed in the smaller galleries.

Hilary Pepler Donkey

Source: Courtesy: Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

Hilary Pepler Donkey

There will also be a new learning space for talks and workshops.

According to the museum, the new interior design ‘is the antithesis of the “white box’’ museum’.

Architect's Impression of Print Gallery

Source: Copyright Adam Richards Architects

Architect’s Impression of Print Gallery

It says,  ‘The carefully crafted new spaces and displays enable the objects of the collection to enter into a poetic dialogue with the place that they were made, and to reveal the stories behind these important artists.’

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  • Simon Manchipp November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    ‘I wanted to do something typography-based rather than logo-based’, smart move.

    This is quietly and elegantly applied branding.

    The attention to detail here is lovely, as you’d expect from Phil Baines.

  • Ditchling Museum of Art+ Craft November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Learn more about letterpress from Phil Baines in a one day master class, held at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft. You will get the rare opportunity to print using the Stanhope Press, which was used by Johnston, Gill and Pepler.
    £200 inc. materials, lunch and morning/afternoon refreshments.
    Monday 24 February.
    Booking essential via http://ow.ly/oLsQg

  • David Wakefield November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I’m looking forward to visiting this new experience after seeing the place some years back. Phil, your contribution looks excellent and the internal view immediately imparts a religious cool that seems so ingratiating.

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