Client: MAK Center
Design: VerbalVisual
Year: 2022
Font in use: Grotta
Founded in 1994, the MAK Center is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)3 non-profit organisation and the California satellite of the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, working in cooperation with the Friends of the Schindler House (FOSH). The core of the programming includes the internationally recognised MAK Artists and Architects-in-Residence Program, an annual residency program for emerging international artists and architects.
Designed by the team at VerbalVisual (@studioverbalvisual) the new website for the MAK Center for Art and Architecture brings Schindler’s concept of Space Architecture to the two-dimensional surface of the screen. Departing from the standard stacked-row approach to website design, the new MAK Center site’s grid system emphasises horizontal and vertical relationships between content elements to create a dynamic and interconnected series of forms on each page.
Each location under the MAK Centre’s stewardship receives a unique colour to allow visitors to quickly differentiate between programming, exhibition, and event venues. The Schindler House is assigned pink, a subtle nod to Mrs. Schindler’s one time colour palette for the house; the Mackey Apartments are blue, a close match to the restored paint colour of built-ins throughout the apartments; and the Fitzpatrick-Leland House is green, a nod to the expansive plant-filled vistas seen from within the house.
To round out the identity, a quirky sans-serif typeface channels the spirit of eccentricity and experimentation that Schindler brought to the California modernist movement.