James Makin Gallery
Making space for contemporary art
James Makin Gallery
Making space for contemporary art
Challenge
Established in 2003, James Makin Gallery is a leading presence in Australian contemporary art.
James Makin Gallery represents a select stable of highly-trained Australian and New Zealand artists, ranging from early-career to established senior artists, representing the breadth and calibre of contemporary art.
With a new gallery space, designed by Tristan Wong (SJB architects), the creative director of Australia’s 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition, James Makin Gallery tasked Self-titled with updating their visual identity and website to coincide with the launch of the new space.
A more robust, flexible logo suite
While the client liked their existing logo, the force-justified format gave it an awkward appearance. We updated the font to ABC Dinamo’s Favorit Mono and added vertical and horizontal spacing to make it more structured.
We also quickly realised that the vertically stacked logo was difficult to use in some scenarios and created a single-line version. In some instances a simplified version without text is employed.
A flexible system
Based on the newly evolved linear logo, we built a robust grid-based system with enough flexibility to provide a range of layout options across postcards, posters and advertising.
The visual identity system accommodates a wide range of artistic mediums and styles meaning that each exhibition can hero the artwork while retaining a consistent gallery brand.
Website
James Makin Gallery’s website follows the same grid system established for marketing materials.
The web development integrates with Art Galleria – a gallery inventory system and dynamically updates the website as new artists, artworks and exhibitions are added.
Credits
All artwork shown care of James Makin Gallery. The copyright for all works remains that of the artists.
Gallery photography by Michael Pham
“Self titled provided a complete branding system, for not only our digital presence, but physical too. The entire process was seamless end to end.”
