Art Basel: Rebrand

2018–19
Art Basel
Basel, Hong Kong, and Miami Beach

Art Basel, founded in 1970, has since grown to become the premier international art fair for modern and contemporary works. Hundreds of galleries from around the word exhibit at three annual shows in Hong Kong, Basel and Miami Beach.

At the end of 2017 Barnbrook began an exhaustive rebrand, rolling it out fully by the conclusion of 2019’s run of shows. The extensive process spanned all areas of the Art Basel brand, encompassing all of their printed material, advertising, environmental branding and a comprehensive wayfinding system, and included a set of 3 custom-drawn typefaces.

In conjunction with the rebrand, the two annual campaigns across this period further evolved the horizon device whilst exploring the eccentricities of local cultural institutions.

2018 saw the Art Basel horizon evolve from two flat visual fields into a more flexible, spatial device: photographing the point at which two walls meet to create a three-dimensional space. Local cultural institutions were explored using this technique, which evolved in 2019 to incorporate the interplay of light and shadow within these spaces.