Strauhof Museum identity proposal (ECAL student project)

Strauhof is a literature museum located in Zürich, exploring the intersection of literature and spatial experience. Its exhibitions engage with the dualities inherent in literature, such as analogue vs. digital or displaying vs. hiding. The proposed visual identity embraces these dualities, translating them into a system that reflects both the conceptual and physical dimensions of the museum.

At the core of the proposed identity is a custom monospace typeface, originally named Literature, designed by Outline Online (at the time: Samira Schneuwly and Laura Csocsán) specifically for this project. The typeface has since been released on the Outline Online platform under the name OO Arketa. In the proposal, it is used across the museum’s communication materials, including posters, flyers, and brochures.

For display sizes, OO Arketa is used with a stylistic set developed exclusively for this context. The custom display style references the interface aesthetics of digital writing tools, subtly alluding to the environments where much of today’s literature is both written and read.

The identity further incorporates handwritten texts from authors and literary figures, closely tied to the respective exhibitions. These handwritten elements repurpose the printed materials into previews, providing a direct link to the literary content and personalizing each exhibition’s visual language.

This identity proposal was developed as a school project at ECAL, exploring the relationship between literature, typefaces and visual identity.