Artificial Realities: A Fusion of Art and Architecture

Award-winning Exhibition Identity by Alex Howell

The inspiration for Artificial Realities came from the Somerset House building itself, combined with graphic elements to convey a sense of the artificial. This marked the 25th year since the inauguration of the East Wing Biennial in 1991. The design team required all materials designing, exhibition catalogue, posters, handout, VIP invitation, and digital banners.

The main graphic element of the design was created after extensive research into the building itself, with a number of visits and discussions with staff to gain as much insight as possible. The graphic and typography used were refined over a number of critiques of the work with the client to ensure that they were happy with the final identity. Feedback was given and implemented throughout.

Exhibition attendees used many of the materials designed to gather information on the artists, the layout of the exhibition and its history. The posters were implemented throughout the Central London area to promote the exhibition and the artists exhibiting. The catalogue contained all works and short art bios so users could gather a greater sense of the work and artist themselves.

The design project started in September 2015 and was completed in January 2016. The task was to create an identity for the exhibition that was strong and recognisable yet allowed the artists work to be the main focus. The main aim was to use the Somerset House building as inspiration. In this way the facade, interiors and other elements of the building needed to be considered in the development of the identity.

Initially, the brief stipulated that the imagery of the Somerset House was required to be used for the identity and sourcing quality imagery on a budget was near enough impossible. As a result, a creative compromise was reached and the illustrative aspect of the project was created to replicate in some form the facade, interiors and other aspects of the building. This was then combined with an intricate grid to create a new structure, thus creating an ideal middle ground for which the client was happy and the title of the exhibition was visually represented.

Artificial Realities, an exhibition of established and emerging artists, marks the 25th year since the inauguration of the East Wing Biennial. The exhibition identity, commissioned by the Courtauld Institute of Art (London) aimed to capture the essence of the artists exhibiting as well as the surroundings in which it was set. The identity graphically utilises the architectural elements of Somerset House merging with intricate graphic grids to create intrigue and uncertainty; this combined with clever use of typography and simple, yet bold colour scheme help evoke a strong exhibition identity.