MAD
A new name, a moving identity and a website for Florence’s contemporary art district.
Le Murate was Florence’s prison for centuries. In 2019 it became MAD, Murate Art District.
After years of abandonment and restoration, the Municipality of Florence opened a contemporary art centre in the old prison, called “Le Murate. Contemporary Art Projects”. It started with the best intentions and struggled to be noticed in a city that lives on Renaissance art: the name was heavy and the identity static, the opposite of what a space in constant change needed. We were given carte blanche, which doesn’t happen often.
A name first
I started from the copy, looking for a name that would carry the ambition of a place open to contemporary movements without borders. The proposal was the acronym MAD, Murate Art District, and it won everyone over.
A logo that never stands still
The logos of Florence’s civic museums are all drawn inside a square. I kept the square and set it moving: small rotating squares that ripple like waves and keep changing shape. A simple form, a rotation around its axis and the three primary colours of the screen, red, green and blue, at full brightness. Sometimes what looks simple isn’t.
A website that changes colour every day
The website uses the same three colours and switches the whole palette every 24 hours, with page-building tools in WordPress so the team can publish on their own.
Outcome
Since opening in early 2019, despite the pandemic, MAD has hosted more than 500 conferences, workshops, performances and concerts, and more than 40 temporary exhibitions by guest and resident artists.
