Radford Wallis docks National Martime Museum initiative branding

Radford Wallis has created a brand campaign and website for the National Maritime Museum’s PortCities project, which aims to raise awareness of heritage collections around the UK.

The group devised a porthole identity for the initiative that focuses, in the first instance, on the historic stories of five port cities – Bristol, Hartlepool, Liverpool, London and Southampton – but may include others in time.

Mini-sites for each of the featured cities have been designed, along with a central home page – www.portcities.org.uk. Newspaper ads, leaflets and direct mail have also been created to promote the project and a ‘second phase’ of marketing material is expected, says Radford Wallis creative director Stuart Radford.

Radford says the challenge was ‘to create an entirely holistic and marketable brand’ from what was ‘an essentially educational project’.

NMM programme manager Suzanne Hammond says the aim is to showcase the wealth of maritime collections held by various archive organisations across the country. Future development may involve exhibitions and catalogues, she adds.