The Wallace Collection

Artful handling of a hidden gem

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The Wallace Collection is home to one of Europe’s finest collections of works of art, paintings, furniture, arms & armour, and porcelain. It is an exceptional National Museum with dedicated, specialist employees providing a wonderful visitor experience. We are exceedingly proud to have worked and developed a wide range of initiatives for the Wallace collection over a period of ten years up until 2015 – including design, art-direction, project management and production services for all exhibitions; external and internal signage systems; hoardings – both internal and external; shop ticketing and signage; café promotions and print; cloakroom tickets and numbering systems; event invites and menus; posters; logos; leaflets; exhibition books, guidebooks and catalogues; press and London Underground advertising; donation boxes; gallery signs and directories; promotions; digital displays and of course the full website including kids’ education programmes – the list is extensive and has provided us with prodigious knowledge of the museum environment.

Brand Management

The Wallace Collection has been a key CiD client for ten years, during which time we have been instrumental in increasing the visibility and popularity of the Museum – its turnover and its success. Originally brought on board to increase visitor numbers, we quickly became the brand custodians across the entire Museum including the website. We unified and evolved the colour palette, strengthened the logo and systematically redesigned all print collateral and re-signed the interior and exterior of the building to reflect these brand changes.

Annual Overview

To maintain and identify new initiatives to improve the visitor experience of the Museum, key personnel from CiD and senior management from the Wallace Collection, would arrange a walking review of all areas of the museum including the main entrance and the exterior. This enabled the teams to fully understand the visitor journey and resulted in many creative enhancements such as large exterior exhibition banners and signs, gallery guides, and interpretation panels harmoniously included within each room.

Advertising Awareness

Working with Danielle Cunningham the Marketing Manager of the Wallace Collection at the time, we reserved both key digital and print locations within London Underground and, by creating eye-catching poster designs incorporating images of iconic works of art from within the Collection, we were able to increase awareness of the Museum locally, and further afield through CBS Outdoors.

A ‘welcome’ make over

There are 22 galleries within the Wallace Collection and under the watchful eye of Rosalind Savill each gallery was extensively refurbished with new silks, lighting, display cabinets and all the works of art rehung, restored or refurbished. As part of these amazing transformations, we were responsible for signing the rooms, including ‘treasure of the month’, the audio guide, interpretation panels, and producing robust gallery guides of the contents. In the entrance reception and cloakroom, we created digital framed canvases of the founders, ‘What’s On’ banners and leaflet holders, donation boxes and a directory to fully welcome visitors to the museum.

Exhibitions all shapes and sizes

CiD was instrumental in branding all Wallace exhibitions, usually three a year, producing a range of banners, panel designs, labelling, large text guides, catalogues, and advertising. The wide variety of exhibits from swords, coins and jewellery to sculpture, etchings, and oils, was at times challenging, but always exciting and rewarding.

Signs of distinction

CiD are responsible for all the exterior signs and banners at the Wallace Collection. We designed, specified and supervised the installation of the heavy-duty poles topped with Boulle motifs for a double-sided tension banner system within the front lawns; the large glazed supergraphics on the listed exterior brickwork; the 5m exhibition entrance banners; main rail entrance and brass panel signs; and the large hoarding graphics, we even designed and produced the flags that fly above the Wallace Collection.

Comprehensively covering all digital bases

Having carried out a full website audit of the site architecture, analytics, and mobile design, we considered a range of UX / UI design improvements and structural changes, to including video engagement and the event management systems, and how these and other aspects of the museum, could be integrated with the website.

“Consultants in Design consistently provided exciting and creative designs for the Wallace Collection – they have been a joy to work with because they have been so skilful and sensitive in understanding what we wanted to achieve for the Wallace Collection branding.”

— Dame Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection