Guggenheim has collaborated with Pentagram to rebrand. The Guggenheim Foundation was founded in 1937 by Solomon R. Guggenheim and operates the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, built by Frank Gehry, are considered masterpieces of architecture.
The Guggenheim wanted to position its museums across three continents—New York, Venice, Bilbao, and Abu Dhabi—as a global cultural brand. Pentagram worked closely with the Guggenheim team in-house, working with Jane Wentworth on brand strategy and positioning.
The most striking change is the symbol. The Guggenheim’s G is an abstract symbol based on the concept of a constellation of museums around the world. The elements that make up the alphabet G are deconstructed and reinterpreted in form. The geometric shape reminds us of tech companies like Google or Logitech, and the strange angle of the starting point gives a human feel.
The new wordmark-like font, Guggenheim Sans, is a geometric open source font with a human touch. It is a variation of Rasmus Andersson’s open source font Inter, which is used to create Guggenheim Sans and Guggenheim Sans Display. In addition, it uses Claus Eggers Sørensen’s open source font Playfair to write Arabic.
When creating layouts in a graphic design system, the artist's images are not cropped without permission, and graphics and typography are separated to allow the focus to be on the work.
