Rebranding | Association for Public Art

About the Organization

The Association for Public Art (aPA) was established in 1872 and is the nation’s first private, nonprofit civic organization dedicated to creating a “museum without walls” by integrating public art and urban design.

aPA carries out its multiple objectives to commission, preserve, interpret, and promote public art in Philadelphia through exemplary and innovative programs and advocacy efforts. By engaging diverse segments of the community, the aPA seeks to respond to the conditions of our time, creating a legacy and maintaining a heritage for future generations while promoting Philadelphia as a premier city for public art.

Approach to rebranding the Association for Public Art

Creative Repute was hired to help aPA revamp its branding, including a new logo identity, brand guidelines, new taglines, and redesigning its digital and print marketing materials.

This rebranding focused on the organization’s longevity and how it can be tailored to celebrate its 150th anniversary in the year 2022. This required a subset of logos that referenced this anniversary in addition to the primary logo mark that will be used to represent the organization after the celebration.

aPA (formerly the Fairmount Park Art Association) wanted to update how Philadelphia audiences viewed them. aPA’s long history is an asset to its story because the organization brings deep expertise about public art and a connection to Philadelphia’s artistic continuum. However, the last few years have shown leadership within aPA that that same history has points about diversity and inclusion that needs to be rectified in order to resonate with young audiences moving into the future.

Today, aPA is becoming increasingly connected to creating opportunities for more equity and exclusion in the art world. aPA understood that it was time to shift from being an organization whose appeal was based solely on its history, to an organization that focused on creative expression and accessibility to everyone interested in art.

Our Approach

Creative Repute started the process with a brand audit and then a kick-off meeting to listen to aPA’s requests for a new look and the organization’s concerns with their branding at that point.

We discussed their 150-year history, the benefits and issues it brings, and how their branding in the past was no longer in line with their new goals—to be more inclusive and showcase artwork from a broader range of humanity.

With the client’s goals and mission in mind, the Creative Repute design team dove into a Discovery Process, which included reviewing the client’s website analytics, and social media insights, and combing through the client’s online presence. Creative Repute recommended centering people of color in aPA’s posts on social media to attract the wider audience which was more in line with aPA’s mission; to make public art for everyone.

Next Creative Repute’s creative team took the data and recommendations from our Strategist and dove into the creation of logos in various styles to help us review branding options and decide on the direction of the new logo. Over the next few weeks, many meetings were held to decide on the logo direction, to present recommendations for new brand colors, and to iron out details for how the new branding will translate into marketing materials for the client.

Some of the discussions centered around the tone of the client’s new messaging, new taglines, and making sure the organization’s culture matched the direction of the rebrand by hiring people that reflected the population in Philadelphia. It was essential to address issues through the redesign’s public-facing aspects and ensure the internal dynamics were authentic and aligned with the new direction.

Several iterations of the logo and style guide were presented to the aPA team, including various color options and combinations that the Creative Repute team ran through accessibility tests for a range of considerations such as visibility and contrast. The style guide presentation included several typeface options, sizes, and combinations.

Meetings helped Creative Repute align closely with the client and to work through micro details of what was needed in the redesign. Meeting in a group setting helped us discover internal disconnects the aPA team had when deciding which direction the designs should go, and gave the Creative Repute specialists opportunities to explain our recommendations further. The discussions also informed the Creative Repute creative team how similar the redesign should be to the previous designs so that it felt like an update instead of a complete redo from scratch.

We landed on a logo option that embraced the creativity the client was looking for while at the same time honoring and accentuating the positive aspects of their legacy.

Once the logo and style guide was finalized, our design team prepared the logo in several file formats and colorways to ensure the design’s personality could be used in multiple settings. Creative Repute also created a series of icons that aPA can use online in spaces where the full logo would not work well, such as a favicon design.

After creating these assets, we updated all the print marketing materials given to us by aPA; including postcards, mailers, email signatures, labels, fax templates, letterhead, envelopes, and other documents and marketing materials.

Creative Repute graphic design agency was proud to have worked with aPA considering our founder’s roots in Public Art and interest in creating accessible designs that can bring the right kind of attention to our clients. Working with aPA on their rebrand and new style guidelines has been a pleasure, and we’re excited to see other designers accurately carry that brand identity forward.