The Erie Canal Museum is a historical museum about the Erie Canal located in Syracuse, New York. The museum was founded in 1962 and is a private, non-profit corporation. It is housed in the Syracuse Weighlock Building dating from 1850. The Syracuse Weighlock Building was in operation as a weighlock from 1850 to 1883.

While assisting with the marketing and design efforts of the Museum's Erie Eats exhibit, I was allowed to take the initiative to formalize and update the Museum’s brand guidelines. The Museum is enriched with a multitude of artifacts, resources, and gorgeous 19th-century ornamental designs that I immediately identified as the inspiration for my design.

The Vision

The Director expressed the desire to create a standardized design resource that both matched the current permanent exhibition’s look and also offered a fresher look.

The Logo

Although many museums have a similar logo, the current logo still seemed appropriate since the Weighlock Building is such a unique and important part of the Museum’s story. However, it was decided that the existing title typeface was too contrasty and not very legible across multiple scales. There fore, I decided to update it with lettering sourced and compiled from 19-century hand-painted signage in the Museum.

Color

This color palette closely matches the blues, golds, and green of the downstairs exhibit, while introducing the brick red and packet boat pink that are prominent in the building and replica packet boat. To reflect their enthusiasm at the time, boat captains on the newly completed Canal painted their boats bright colors like red, pink, yellow, and blue.

Ornaments

The Museum is full of gorgeous, hand-painted ornamental elements, and so I could think of nothing better to visualize the brand. I painstakingly collected and vectorized the various elements I found around the Museum the incorporate in all multimedia assets.

Erie Canal Museum’s Brand Values

1 ― Enriching

As the Mother of Cities, the Erie Canal gave birth to much of the life in the Canal Corridor, and in this same vein, the Museum serves the regional community as a source of education, recreation, and entertainment.

2 ― Eclectic

Much like the symbiotic relationship the Canal shared with the natural landscape of New York, the Museum simultaneously draws from and serves a numerous communities in the Canal Corridor.

3 ― Enthusiastic

The enthusiasm that filled New Yorkers during the heyday of the Erie Canal carries on at the Museum, where an appreciation for Canal’s history and impact is championed.