The Museum of Bad Art

Logo / Brand Guidelines / Extensions / Case Study

2023

Case Study

The Museum of Bad Art has been bringing “the worst of art to the widest of audiences,” since opening in 1994 in Boston, Massachusetts. MOBA maintains two galleries in the Boston area as well as online displays of their collections on Facebook, Culture Spot, YouTube and through their newsletter. MOBA also hosts special events and traveling shows, exhibiting art from other museums. Due to limited space, the exhibition only shows 40 to 50 pieces at a time although their collection numbers almost 800 works of art “too bad to be ignored”.

The task was to create a successful brand identity for a small, outdated business. I chose The Museum of Bad Art because of their personality, love for comedy and loyal client base. I created a logo, color palette, brand guidelines and several brand extensions to fulfill the requirements of this assignment and to give MOBA a new identity.

This project took place during the winter of 2023, the second quarter of my last year at Western Washington University. It was a solo project that took me about six weeks to complete.

Problem

The main problem with the Museum of Bad Art’s current brand identity is it lacks the personality that the art inside of it proclaims. This client has so many great things going for it, but it’s missing the cohesive and sophisticated brand identity needed to stand with its competitors.

Solution

To give the museum a personality that matched that of its contents, I created a quirky, lively and colorful brand. I created a logo that expresses these traits and a color palette that represents the museum’s playful atmosphere. I came up with brand guidelines that provided stability and structure to the museum’s otherwise inconsistent identity.

Brainstorming

For me, this begins with a mood board; I usually turn to the old, familiar Pinterest. I started by compiling a board of logos and similar marks that related to the museum’s ideal look.

Then I sketched out some logos and other visual concepts.

Research

My research began with a creative brief. I scoured MOBA’s website and Yelp reviews to understand more about who they are and I searched the Boston area for their competition. I used the museum’s most attractive qualities along with brand elements that seemed to work elsewhere to come up with MOBA’s rebrand objective.

From these benefits that The Museum of Bad Art displays, their fun and interesting concept is the most important message. MOBA’s unique business leaves them very few direct competitors. Visitors of this museum will care about this message and appreciate the rebrand because they value unique, fresh and entertaining experiences.

I researched popular museums for their effective brands and unique attractions in Boston to see who MOBA would be directly competing with (if you’re in the Boston area and want to see my list let me know, it’s pretty awesome). They all had a couple things in common. They all used a wide range of color, but sparingly. I realized with this project that using minimal amounts of color would allow for the art to speak for itself.

Target Audience

The Museum of Bad Art attracts a wide range of visitors. I chose to capitalize on the belief that people who love art also love bad art, even those who don’t know a lot about art in general still appreciate the comedy of an entire museum full of bad art. MOBA’s rebrand aims to attract those who love bad art as a concept of comedy as well as those who mostly love good art. The Museum is also a goofy item on a long list of unique attractions in the Boston area, sure to fall on many tourists’ itineraries.

Concept Evolution

I researched popular museums for their effective brands and unique attractions in Boston to see who MOBA would be directly competing with (if you’re in the Boston area and want to see my list let me know, it’s pretty awesome). Auditing these places really helped to clarify the goals of MOBA’s rebrand. They all had a couple things in common. They all used a wide range of color, but sparingly. Color and personality had to be implemented appropriately, it had to be more sophisticated but not too sophisticated.

I looked at various shapes and letterforms and how they’ve been combined in the past to create impactful logos. The museum’s logo started as a lettermark, aligning with many popular, and successful, museums. But that didn’t fit their personality. MOBA is quirky, it doesn’t fit the stiff, ultra-sophisticated mold of a typical museum. The Museum of Bad Art celebrates what doesn’t make it into the archives, it celebrates the mistakes, the trials and errors.

This museum celebrates people – humanity – in all its forms.

During the evolution of MOBA’s logo, I recalled something I had learned in a long-ago psychology class about the human mind. There is this psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia that causes people to see patterns in different shapes. It’s most commonly recognized as the moment when we see faces in objects and places where there isn’t one.

I took some of the lettermark ideas I had sketched earlier and combined them with this concept of a face that only sort of looks like a face because well, it isn’t one. I took the museum’s initials and began moving them around, bending and positioning them in different ways to create something as close to a face as possible.

A couple of these weirdos were taken to final in illustrator, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with any of them. They all had one eye and features that looked like letters, what could be more quirky and recognizable than faces like these?

A hat.

Visual Design

In addition to a creating a logo, I developed a color palette, selected typefaces, created a custom font and other branded imagery, and came up with a brand guideline packet to further show MOBA into a new brand identity.

See Full Brand Guidelines

Challenges & Reflection

I realized with this project that using minimal amounts of color would allow for the art to speak for itself. Most of the time I fear white space in my work but this project helped me understand why it can be such a strong design element.

A challenge for me was working on multiple pieces of the same project at once. I kept wanting to take the logo to final first, then move on to typography, then colors, and so on. It’s a big test for me as a perfectionist to graduate from step to step rather than complete one thing at a time, making each piece pixel perfect before even thinking about the next. With a project like this I think it’s so important to build the entire brand together to ensure cohesion. It’s also easier to work with any dependent variables when everything progresses at a steady pace together.