CAM Raleigh: Building a brand for a new contemporary art museum

We helped CAM Raleigh launch a home for the region’s art, design, and culture.

With a renovated old produce warehouse as a future home, and a launch months away, it was time to clearly define who CAM Raleigh is, how it’s different, and why it matters.

New Kind began work with the passionate citizens, who stewarded the contemporary art museum idea for over a decade, in order to help bring the concept to fruition.

A Collaborative Process

We worked together to articulate the brand strategy, which flowed into the visual identity project and storytelling. Stakeholders helped us generate, prototype, and refine ideas.

The Opportunity

CAM Raleigh can become a new, urban home for contemporary art and design, as well as a cultural leader. Building on a storied history, and numerous stakeholders, the museum would benefit from a consistent purpose, story and identity.

Services Provided

• Visual and verbal identity design
• Activity design
• Design strategy
• Storytelling
• Community engagement
• Brand strategy and positioning
• Brand rollout
• Website interface

Approach and Outcome

Throughout the partnership, New Kind and CAM Raleigh stakeholders leveraged online platforms and in-person meetings to co-create all strategy and prototypes. We focused on ensuring all participants were involved, to ensure that each one would operate as a member of a chorus, not a crowd.

This continuous dialogue helped frame the opportunity and current challenges. After the research phase, we understood our challenge was to simplify a winding history and bold vision into a captivating brand position. We worked together to articulate the brand strategy, which flowed into the visual identity project and storytelling. Stakeholders helped us generate, prototype, and refine ideas.

Key areas of work centered around articulating the museum’s purpose, creating a symbol worthy of representing CAM Raleigh’s ambition, and crafting a story that told its evolution and future. We sought to engage the community by making it easy for people to tell the story themselves.

Our collaborative process brings many people with many diverse perspectives into the room, so that all ideas benefit from constructive critique and are inevitably shared by all.

“New Kind’s philosophy of community-centered design was very important to the museum. They led a complicated process that produced outstanding results. It was a pleasure to work with the firm and it was very apparent from the start they were very invested in our success.”
– Raven Manocchio, Chair,? CAM Raleigh Advisory Board