Museo Stefano Bardini

Branding / Typography 
Spring 2019


︎ Theoretical rebranding a small, eclectic museum of antiquity with a typographic ligature-based identity system.

Museo Stefano Bardini is a small, eclectic collection of antiquity located right in the heart of Florence. It is home to a wide assortment of work, from armor to biblical sculptures to hanging tapestries. The museum is currently associated with the Florentine Civic Museums, but lacks their own brand identity.




︎ Current website for the Florentine Civic Museums. Museo Stefano Bardini has a tab on this site, but lacks their own brand identity or website.

Elements that are essential to the existing Bardini identity—which in turn became focal points of my new system—are the Bardini blue color and the wall of assorted frames that the museum is most known for. My typographic system focused on these concepts of mis-matching and frames within frames.



︎ Wall of frames that Museo Stefano Bardini is most known for. The distinct blue walls are called “Bardini blue” and are essential to their current recognition.

My typographic system builds on the ligatures found in antiquity engravings, and offers unlimited variation in application from signage to print materials. The color palette consists of Bardini blue, a darker complementary navy, and black.


︎ Early visual research on ligatures

The typeface is derived from IvyJournal, designed by Jan Maack from Ivy Foundry. The various applications are fairly minimal, playing with depth and negative space to accentuate the elegance of the letter forms themselves.




︎ Early typographic iteration