Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam’s brand identity for Foam sets the museum into motion for the first time

Established as an international and multifaceted museum for photography, Foam first opened its doors in Amsterdam all the way back in 2001. For the past 25 years, the institution has grown into an internationally established brand, printed magazine and online platform. Its original identity, developed by Vandejong creative agency, “has remained strong, but Foam’s positioning has evolved alongside social changes and the shifting photography landscape”, shares Irene Bakker, head of marketing and communications at Foam.

Seeking a new brand system that would reposition Foam and stretch across all of the museum’s platforms and initiatives, the team reached out to Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam to develop a cohesive new visual identity that channels the pioneering space Foam has carved out. The main challenge of the brief, according to Alex, design director at W+K Amsterdam, “was to join the dots between all platforms (museum, magazine and digital) so Foam could be more visible without detracting from the photography”.

Foam had had a static brand system to date and W+K were keen to make motion a key element of the brand’s repositioning, but only in a way that felt like the right fit for the platform. Whilst the world of branded motion design can often be slick and seamless, lead motion designer and director at W+K, Sohyeon Nam, established very early on in the project that motion for Foam would not be just any kind of “decoration”. Instead, it would be about “creating a digital voice to pause and truly see,” he says. If Foam is a photography platform that’s all about getting people to slow down be challenged by what they are looking at, the strategy for the agencies approach to this new design dimension would be guided by “the weight of stillness”, the designer continues, converging a motion language that that carries “resistance, friction, tension, angular shifts, and pause”.

These more deliberate motion behaviours were pulled into focus with an abstract and irregular backdrop of sound design to create something that feels “as open and curious as the visuals and motion”, shares Miray van der Bend, former designer at W+K. “Its subtle shifts in rhythm and texture echo the idea of many perspectives: layered, diverse, sometimes contrasting, yet connected,” she says.

Underneath these new design forays for Foam, the photography itself still sits centre frame – W+K decided early on to to build on the platform’s history and existing visual reputation. With the sheer amount of eye-catching work from emerging photographers to draw from, the teams type choices didn’t need to be overpowering. So, the existing Monument san-serif typeface that makes up Foam’s iconic logo has remained, offset by Kormelink, a serif typeface by WiseType. Whilst this appears to be a more classic pairing, the agency deliberately injected a system of heavy tabs into their typesetting to use spacing and placement to orchestrate layouts that felt “refined yet unpredictable”, Alex says. For the museum’s sub-brand Foam Talent, the team decided to pair the classic logotype with Bobine, (also by Wise Type) as it was flexible enough to change with scale and alluded to a visual “constellation of talent”.

There was, however, one small change that W+K imparted on Foam’s original logo: a subtle cut to its ‘a’. The key to connecting type across formats, this detail became a “flexible alignment tool throughout the identity”, continues Alex. Mirrored in the subtlety of this decision, a lot of the visual choices the agency made were paired down and precise. There is often a kind of “rigid consistency” that can be a symptom of building a visual system that needs to live across applications, ends Alex, but W+K wanted to approach the identity in a way that meant there were “subtle echoes of print, digital and the spatial across everything”. Pinching details such as the colour of the blue glass tiles in the museum’s building to frame Foam’s talent, to the feeling of leafing through the magazines pages to inform parts of the brands motion language, the brand’s new design identity treats each touchpoint slightly differently, acknowledging their individual contexts and differences.