The National Portrait Gallery

In early autumn of 2022, EDIT invited Monotype to partner on one of London’s most anticipated rebrands, the refurbished National Portrait Gallery which is home to some of the world’s most iconic and progressive portraits. Renovations began in 2020, when our friends at EDIT were tasked to reimagine the brand and develop a transformative strategy alongside partners Boardroom Consulting.

Initially, Tom Foley (Monotype Executive Creative Director) selected pieces from the NPG archive as reference points for the typeface and quickly began sketching. From these hand-drawn ideas, multiple design directions were explored, each taking inspiration from different aspects of the brand’s heritage research. We then designed three typefaces for The National Portrait Gallery with EDIT Brand Studio. First, a bold display font then two focused text typefaces that are derived from the initial style. I was brought in to finish and polish the final display drawings, then fully design the text sub-family. This simple, yet typographically practical family was optimized to work across the gallery’s physical and digital platforms.

Big thanks to the entire studio at Monotype for assisting us and making this possible. It was truly a pleasure working with Adrian Newell and the team at Edit Brand Studio, who created all the images and videos below, plus the entire rebranding of the NPG. The monogram and logo are by Peter Horridge. The entire case study can be found here.