Morningside Gallery
“We now have confidence and pride in our new brand, from our newly designed gallery shop front to our fully optimised website with new user-friendly features to ensure art is accessible to everyone. Our website played such an important role during lockdown when our gallery was closed – ¾ of sales came via website enquiries. 39steps genuinely want to help businesses realise their full potential and they have lots of great ideas as to how that can be made possible“
Eileadh Swan / Director, Morningside Gallery
brief
Opened in 2003, Morningside Gallery in Edinburgh offers art buyers both quality and variety within a welcoming gallery space. The team pride themselves on building close relationships with both clients and artists.
The gallery represents a large and varied stable of artists with one section regularly featuring a large body of work from an individual artist or themed collection.
We worked with the gallery team to create a modern, simple brand identity to reflect who they were. We then applied the brand across the design of their shopfront to capture attention of passing footfall and customers.
We redesigned their website to be their online catalogue helping to showcase new paintings, exhibitions and collections along with easy browsing of the artists’ catalogues.
services
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Brand
The logo is inspired by the concept of the art gallery, the framing of art and the curation.
The unusual layout of the text is a nod to how things are curated in an art gallery – everything is considered and surprising layouts or pairings are always more interesting than the obvious.
A lime green and navy colour combo was chosen. The logo is used in navy when it needs to be more subtle and the shop front signage uses bright lime green to grab attention of visitors and passing footfall.
The brand identity is applied to many items, including packaging (gift bags, stickers, tissue paper and ribbon), print (vouchers, postcards and exhibition booklets) and a enewsletter.
Signage
The logo had to work horizontally for the shop signage and also on the website so we created an alternative lock-up.
The shop signage was at the front of our minds when selecting the brand colours.
We had to strike a fine balance between ensuring that the gallery stood out from neighbouring shops on a busy Edinburgh street while not distracting from the beautiful artwork and window displays which are frequently changed.
The shop front was previously grey, mirroring the colour of many other shops. So, dark navy was chosen to make an immediate visual impact and represent the new direction of the brand.
The full logo, as a vinyl, is used on the door rather than the windows to ensure that your eye is drawn to the artwork. Signage with raised lettering and custom-matched lime green paint pops against the navy.
website
To help position Morningside Gallery as the place to buy contemporary Scottish art it was important that the website introduced the talented team behind the gallery – their passion, knowledge and relationships with featured artists.
Visitors can now watch engaging videos with the artists along with gallery walkthroughs featuring insightful commentary by the team. A move to having more of a personality and a human face is an important part of the gallery’s future direction as they position themselves as ‘authorities’ in their field by highlighting their knowledge.
The responsive website, integrated with Artlook, has a minimalist design and a full screen feature so that paintings can be viewed in all their glory (including a cool feature where customers can see how a painting looks in situ in their home). The team can update and refresh their digital shop-front as frequently as their shop window displays. With simple navigation visitors can now view new paintings, view work by their favourite artists or find out more about the latest exhibition.
Results
Increased footfall in the physical gallery and 3/4 of sales during lockdown via the improved website.
75%
of revenue generated through the website, during lockdown
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