Arts Council Collection

The Arts Council Collection is the most widely circulated national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art. Founded in 1946, the Collection reaches the broadest possible audience through long loans to public institutions, exhibition loans, touring exhibitions, as well as digital and print publications.

Operating as a ‘museum without walls’, the Arts Council Collection is the largest national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art in the world, and includes important examples by all of the UK’s most prominent artists, and continues to purchase and display their work, and safeguards it for future generations for over 75 years. We were asked to create a logo to celebrate the anniversary. The design wanted to compliment the existing logo yet not compete with it. The ‘75’ emulates the converging circles from the Arts Council Collection logo. As part of the anniversary we also created new artist information pages for works throughout the collection.

Arts Council Collection also work directly with schools to support young people’s creative lives and to help teachers deliver excellent cultural and creative education. The new education programme Take Two, is based on selected schools chosing two works from the Collection, this extends the work of the Collection in an inclusive and exciting way by installing them in the individual schools. We developed a colourful playful branding that worked with a bold graphic font with each letter containing two circles to represent the two selected works of art, it also links back to the Arts Council Collection logo. We then created a teachers’ toolkit for both primary and secondary schools enabling teachers to use the works of art for all curriculum subjects, so the students can study and learn to interpret the different works through their own observations and creativity.

Images © Arts Council Collection