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Museum of London annual review

By Scott McCubbin

The project marks the Museum’s first move towards a digital rather than traditional printed copy of the review. The review allows viewers to link directly to relevant films and external weblinks – through an interactive contents bar and clear links.

MoL’s corporate business planner, Rachel Williams, described it as a major breakthrough: “We’re thrilled with the end result. This isn’t simply a case of taking a hard copy version online. The agency took the brief of creating a fully functioning digital annual review, capitalising on the material and links to our partners.

It was really exciting to do something completely different to what had been done before and going down the digital route allowed us to incorporate film and animation as well as creating something really visually appealing. Promoting the Review via email and through our website means that it has the potential to reach a much bigger audience than ever before. Feedback from staff and stakeholders so far has been great.”

We were keen to develop the review with the Museum, exploiting digital opportunities and their team were very open to ideas. After the initial meeting and our own audit, it was clear that they had lots of great content that it would have been foolish not to use.

Annual reviews are still pretty static affairs, but it was this dynamic approach that appealed to the Museum and persuaded them to work with us for the first time. Although the films are hosted on Youtube, each is viewed on a special branded window, maximising the brand profile. The content includes weblinks through a branded page to the Olympic 2012 site, highlighting the Museum’s involvement in the Cultural Olympiad.

The review is being distributed by email to Museum stakeholders and will also be hosted on the Museum website.

The approach is dynamic and fresh, but also cost effective, which was an important part of the brief. And the creative concept behind the review was to flip the traditional ‘You are here’ floor plan associated with a venue, focusing on ‘We are here’. This allowed the design team to create a graphic device which linked the sections from ‘Exhibitions and Programmes’ to ‘Learning’ to ‘Finance’.

We’ve also created a viral using a timeline device, following ‘the journey of the Museum in the last 12 months’, tying the various elements altogether.

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