Rebranding for MAF

Brand Strategy and Design

Market Research & Customer flow

Brand Strategy (Voice, Values, Positioning)

Visual Identity Design

Editorial and Packaging Design

Brand Book with Identity Guidelines

Personal project

Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Miro, Notion

2025

MAF stands for Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze (National Archaeological Museum of Florence) and currently presents an incoherent and weak verbal and visual identity.

The museum holds a substantial permanent collection comprising of Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman artefacts as well as items belonging to the De' Medici family, who ruled Florence and, later, the rest of Tuscany during most of the period from 1434 to 1737, provided the Roman Catholic Church with four popes – Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV, Leon XI – and married into the royal families of Europe. The museum also hosts temporary exhibitions and events.

Despite the museum's broad exhibition and activity, each section speaks its own language and in its own graphics. Temporary notices may look different from one another and from permanent ones. The current museum thus called for a coherent identity, both verbal and visual.

After an in-depth research to understand all aspects of the museum and to define the customers' nature and flow, which was also possible thanks to the staff of the institution, a new coherent brand identity was established.

The personality of the new brand reminds one of the wise yet witty character of a powerful, knowledgeable person. To reflect this, rules around adopted lexicon, style and tone of voice were established.

To reflect the personality and to improve legibility of information, Neulis Neue was chosen as the primary Typeface, a sans-serif 'with a flair', accompanied by Ten Oldstyle, which works as the secondary typeface.

At the same time, the many artefacts' materials the museum holds were used to generate the brand's versatile colour palette: the Iron Red palette for the permanent main collection – Egyptian, Etruscan and Roman –, the Pottery Orange palette for kids-related activities, the Malachite Green palette for temporary exhibitions and events, and the Copper Blue palette for anything related to the De' Medici.

The visual identity called for impactful elements representing the history the museum holds but, on the other hand, linked to modern times.

Starting from a visual map, history stands for a collection of tangible things like materials and intangible elements like memories and languages. The museum, being the place where history is held, becomes the setting, in the present day, where people can hear and see echoes of the past to inform their future.

The logomark comes from a symbol present in most of the artefacts present in the museum, while also representing the concept behind the entire visual identity.

The Echo Symbol is another useful visual element to let the Key Visual (artefact photograph) speak in the design.

Following, we can see the comparison between the new logo system and the old singular logo.

Given that the museum's building belonged to the De' Medici family, it is clear why the current (old) logo chose to represent the hero artefact of the family's collection: the Chimera.

However, the old logo did not serve the full variety and spectrum of artefacts and activities the museum breathes.

As examples of applied guidelines, posters (both for the shop and OOH ads), postcards, social media posts & stories – the current museum is quite active on Instagram – were developed, as well as a brochure usable as both a ticket and a map to get around the building, and staff cards, especially useful for events.

At the same time, the museum has a small but interesting gift shop. Some articles and their packaging were thus developed to showcase the range of the verbal and visual identity application.

The wayfinding and signage used by the museum follow, instead, their own rules, laid out in the Brand Book with Identity Guidelines.