The Breman Museum is an Atlanta-based Jewish museum that both celebrates and commemorates the Jewish experience and the universal themes of diversity and human dignity. As the Director of Membership and Visitor Services of the Breman, I have been an integral part of the reorganization and redevelopment of the museum which began in 2012.
The rebranding process left no stone unturned - changing the logo was just the beginning. After we debuted the new, more modern logo, letterhead and membership materials quickly followed to unify our aesthetic. These changes represent some of my most significant accomplishments during my five years in this position, in addition to the development of a brand new website and creation of merchandise to sell in the museum store.
The goal for the logo redesign was to simplify both the appearance as well as the museum's name - from "The Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum" to just "The Breman Museum." By including the simple silhouette of the Jewish star, it visually portrays the part of the name that was taken away and allows for a much more versatile design.
The organization's logo prior to redesign.
NEW LOGO AND COLLATERAL
In addition to all of the standard collateral items pictured above, the museum also required some branded items that were not quite as common.
On the left is a photograph of singer Liz Callaway posing in front of the Breman's logo backdrop after her performance of The Carole King Songbook for the 2017 Molly Blank Jewish Concert Series.
The photograph on the right shows the name tags that were designed for the board and staff to wear at programs and events.
WEBSITE
REDESIGN
Revamping the museum's website was definitely one of the largest projects I have ever worked on. The old site was comprised of thousands of pages of tedious and unnecessary text that needed to be weeded through and entirely rewritten for a more modern, fast-paced society that needs information in 140 characters or less, not 140 paragraphs (I'm not joking). In addition to being incredibly text heavy, it was also graphics light. Images were small and sparsely used.
But one of the most critical elements of the old website that had to be completely restructured was the structure itself - the site was not created with UX in mind; it was a labyrinth of pages where users became easily frustrated and would drop off before finding the information they needed. To add insult to injury, the site was not mobile-friendly.
Working with CoolBlue and the marketing department of the Breman, we spent months researching cutting edge museum-focused web design and came to several conclusions - the new site would need to be driven by interesting images, navigation needed to be simplified to single word options, and rather than designing the structure around the internal departmental workings of the museum, it needed to be as logically oriented as possible for even the least tech-savvy user.
What we ended up creating was an award winning site that is aesthetically interesting, responsively designed, and easy to navigate. It won Gold in the Cultural Institution category for both the 2015 W3 Awards and the 2015 Davey Awards. It also received a Silver for the 2015 Communicator Awards.
To see the site, please visit www.thebreman.org.
OLD HOME PAGE
NEW HOME PAGE
OLD EVENTS PAGE
NEW EVENTS PAGE
