When Felipe Rocha still lived in São Paulo, the designer often spent his spare time soaking up the art on display at Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), a leading art museum in the city and Brazil more broadly. Getting the opportunity to create its new identity, along with his partner Leo Porto and the team at their eponymous New York agency, is therefore something of a significant milestone in his career.
Established in 1968, the museum is celebrated for its domineering modernist architecture designed by Italian-born architect Lina Bo Bardi. The building is instantly recognisable for the flash of red along its exterior and its squat, dense proportions amid São Paulo’s muted skyscrapers.
These architectural features are evoked in Porto Rocha’s new brand identity, with the red and black palette and the robust lettering visible in its wordmark and across the wider identity, which uses FT Aktual by Formula Type.
Bardi and her husband, the museum’s founding director Pietro Maria Bardi, shared a vision for MASP as a space of openness, revolving around a wall-less gallery design that displayed works on easels, meaning vast numbers of artworks were visible at the same time. The construction of traditional partition walls in 1996 caused a stir, but in 2015 the easels were reintroduced as part of an ongoing long-term exhibition, Picture Gallery in Transformation.
Those same original intentions are incorporated into the design of a newly opened wing, the Pietro Maria Bardi building, which upon entering the space offers a full view of the art galleries without any walls.
From the street, the towering new building is perpendicular to the original museum, creating a dramatic contrast in both colour and proportion. This is reflected in the visual identity, where red and black blocks are used as flexible graphic devices referencing the coming together of the existing and new buildings.
“At its core, the identity pays homage to Brazilian modernist design – drawing inspiration from figures like Alexandre Wollner, Aloísio Magalhães, Mary Vieira, Augusto de Campo, and Cauduro Martino – but reinterpreted for 2025,” says the agency.
The new identity plays out across the museum, from wayfinding and interior signage to outdoor displays and banners. This new era in the museum’s history came with a need to rethink its digital presence too. Porto Rocha redesigned its website, which features confident typographic scales and a modular design system that can accommodate the breadth of the museum’s communications
Meanwhile, contemporary motion design brings the identity to life across digital touchpoints. This includes a range of moving image treatments that present assets as though they are floating, just like the exhibits in the wall-less gallery spaces.
The vibrant and modular visual identity pays homage to the Bardis’ original philosophy and design approach – recalling everything from the building’s architecture to those unconventional easel displays – while stepping firmly into a new chapter in the museum’s journey.
