museumsinsel berlin
information and signage system, corporate design
berlin 2002

invited competition, not realized 

‘museumsinsel’ (museum island) is an island of culture. it is a synthesis of landscape and architecture, a dialogue between city and river, a bridge between old and new. it is a meeting place of busyness and peace, of the spoken and the written word. museum island is a special place. a collection refers to a building; the building refers to its location. the name, set in upper case, is the basis for the generic logo. the upper ends of the capitals are extended, producing a pattern; adding all these patterns together creates a barcode – the wordmark. this expresses the principle that each individual element is always contained within the whole, and that the whole is always the sum of its individual parts. the result is a system in which each individual wordmark refers back to the whole. using the barcodes as a recurring element across all applications creates a unifying design feature.