Based in Basel, Museum Tinguely exhibits the work of Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely.
Housed in a building designed by architect Mario Botta, the museum opened its doors to the public in 1996 and is the permanent home for a number of Tinguely's kinetic art sculptures. Temporary exhibitions showcase the work of Tingyely’s contemporaries and peers – as well as modern artists such as Bernhard Luginbühl, Yves Klein and Wim Delvoye.
Museum Tinguely’s original visual identity gave a lot of space to the exhibiting artists, firmly consigning the museum’s visuals to the background of external marketing materials and collateral. Pentagram were tasked with creating a new visual identity that would address this imbalance, presenting the museum and its featured artists as equal partners.
The identity created by Pentagram transplants the spirit and passion of Jean Tinguely’s art into the museum’s visual identity, paying homage to the institution’s inextricable connection to the artist, as well as underpinning its status as a major cultural venue. Taking inspiration from Tinguely’s iconic music machines, Pentagram created a bespoke typeface that is used across the museum’s identity. The logo’s perfectly rounded ‘G’ has been rotated to represent the movement of the large industrial wheels in Tinguely’s installations.
In addition to creating Museum Tinguely’s visual identity, Pentagram redesigned the website, signage and other collateral for the space. The website utilises the same bespoke font for titles and headlines, as well as the vivid print colours cyan, magenta and yellow – which have been used throughout all applications of the identity.
