Museum of London website given a refresh

Precedent has designed a new website for the Museum of London based on interface design it carried out in the museum’s Sackler Hall.

Appointed over the course of the Sackler Hall project, completed in May, Precedent has worked up a website design which takes cues from the Coley Porter Bell-designed Museum of London brand. The new site is expected to replace the incumbent site, designed by Tape London, at some point in the new year.

The Sackler Hall project saw Precedent design information points with an interface giving access to a navigable archive of the museum’s collections.

Precedent design director David Curless says the website covers the Museum of London, the Museum of London Docklands and the Museum of London Archaeology, each with a colour variation of the main interface. These are navigated by tabs on the home page.

The ’organic, rounded’ identity has informed a ’softened’ look to the site, according to Curless, who says the consultancy has avoided ’hard boxes’ in the design.

Like the Sackler Hall information points, photographic records form the basis of the website, which will serve as a digital archive ’to let people have access to collections they wouldn’t otherwise see’, according to Curless. These include artefacts which aren’t on display in the museum.

Curless says the ’crown jewels’ of the collections will be on display and thumbnail pictures will link through to related pieces to encourage people to explore. Artefacts, paintings, drawings and audio records will all be available.

The Museum of London has undergone a £20m overhaul introducing five new spaces – including the Sackler Hall – which together make up the Galleries of Modern London, designed to chart the story of London from 1666 to the present day.