Project brief: The McCord Museum, Montréal’s leading history museum, is home to one of North America’s most significant collections of historical objects. Its 90th anniversary is the perfect opportunity to revisit its identity in order to better reflect its position, thus reaffirming itself as a modern museum with a global outlook, open to the world—an intelligent museum that provides food for thought. The Museum’s new signature will be McCord Museum: Our People, Our Stories.

Approach: The logo was created to reflect the new positioning of the establishment and refers to the imprint that history has on the present, and that which the McCord Museum has on its visitors and on the city.

To strengthen the impact of the Museum’s communications, a complete and consistent brand style was created including typography, color palette and photo treatment, using the fingerprint concept as its imprint. Outside and inside signage applications were implemented for the launch to complete the visitors’ experience, including specific graphics and pictograms derived from the new identity.

Finally, we developed a poster campaign for its 90 Treasures, 90 Stories, 90 Years anniversary exhibition. The creative concept was to wrap three significant and distinct objects at the exhibition with paper printed with the identity fingerprint. The idea was to invite the public to enter and discover the 90 treasures that the Museum’s curators carefully selected from the Museum’s collection, and unwrap the three objects to reveal their great historical value.

Effectiveness: As the Museum is home to one of the largest historical collections in North America, and one that documents Montréal’s history in particular, it was critical that it add to the city’s dynamism. The aim of the campaign was to liven up the McCord Museum’s image and raise interest for its anniversary exhibition, as well as engage the audience (visitors and Montréalers) with the stories behind its collections.

Fun activation of a brand identity applied to different media.