Pentagram has designed a visual identity for Art UK, a charity that exists to record and showcase all the art owned by the UK in all of its public collections. The UK has the world’s greatest public art collection with 212, 732 artworks by 38,370 artists displayed throughout 3,261 venues in England, Scotland and Wales. These works are collectively owned by UK residents, but because of the sheer amount, and their geographical spread, very few Britons know the true extent of their public art. Art UK has digitised many of these artworks, making it easy for everyone to see them in one virtual space.
The identity expresses the theme of connectivity. It is flexible and elastic, indicating different points of access and ways of interpreting art. Each letter of the logotype is joined to another, reflecting how the public interacts with the Art UK website and the artworks within the collection.
As well as creating a visual identity, Pentagram developed a new name for Art UK. The purpose of the new name was to signify the organisation’s change of strategy and their shift away from printed catalogues to the current digitised collection.
Pentagram worked with Art UK and their key stakeholders to define their brand, and from that a suitable name. Together they realised that the name and the brand needed to denote provenance, scale, participation and digital access. From this came the name Art UK, and the simple end line, ‘Welcome to the nation’s art’.
