Client: 4C Hub Wien
Brand strategy, design, animation: Bea Cetina
German translation & proof-reading: Alexandra Werner
Introduction
Zeitgeist is a Vienna-based gallery complex focused on showcasing 20th and 21st century art, as well as cultivating a lively local community with various workshops, art auctions, events, and a large public relaxation area, all of this on over 2000m² of space.
Strategy
Before we got to the design stage, I first conducted thorough research and with the help of several brand strategy sessions, we uncovered a couple brand adjectives, and later created three distinct customer personas.
Image by Josh Wilburne
Image by Aaina Sharma
Positioning Statement
This brand research helped determine a single direction to aim Zeitgeist Galerie in --building a community around art. (Gemeinschaft rund um Kunst)
Image by: Muhammad Raufan Yusup
Design
The focus on community-building can be seen at every brand touch-point, from the deliberate inclusion of social spaces like the café and the public area, all the way to how the brand looks and feels like.
Image by Teemu Paananen
Image by: Williamwildstinson
The DIN 2014 typeface was chosen to reflect this warm feeling of a community: it's a type family that manages to be both humanist and geometric at the same time.
Even the Z 🡪 G design element can reference the community motif; by being a word play for Zusammen eine Gemeinschaft: together a community.
Image by The Creative Exchange
The brand identity itself uses a primarily monochrome colour palette, and seesaws between rigid shapes and tight grids, to very chaotic, liquid and distorted elements. It also makes ample use of arrows, 90° and 45° angles to give a sense of constant movement.
Photo by me
Top image by myself, middle right image by Michael Jasmund, middle left image by Drop the Label Movement, middle image by Andreas Erbslöh, bottom image by Paul Green
The brand's use of vivid colours is mostly there either for accentuation (such as the case for ticket designs), or to adapt to the art style of exhibitions, workshops, and events. (examples below)
Photo by me
(from left to right) Images by Andreas Erbslöh and Derek Key
Conclusion
Zeitgeist Galerie is a self-initiated project, designed to serve as a showcase of my brand strategy and design skillset. The facility was imagined as my own ideal gallery nested in the center of Vienna, one of Europe's biggest culture centers, and created from the foundation as a community-first arts institution.
Having been a fan of art for several years already, I was sick of all the pretentiousness found in the art world. Everyone is so full of entitlement that I couldn't stomach it. What about the rest of populace? Most of them would love art if it wasn't for all the elitism.
Zeitgeist seeks to change this. It gives a place for anyone interested in art to be a part of something larger, something that helps their local community while also attracting foreign visitors and acclaimed guests.
I would also like to thank my good friend Alexandra for helping out with the German translations, and Aaron for providing the song for the introduction video.
Thank you for viewing,
Bea