Pentagram rebuilt the Frist's identity from a snake-like S in its 1932 post office tiles

The museum, housed since 2001 in a 1932 former post office listed on the National Register of Historic Places, wanted a major rebrand: a modern identity with, in Pentagram's words, 'staying power — that will still feel fresh and undated in 10 years' that still paid tribute to its art-deco roots.

Rebuild the brand from the building: the elongated snake-like 'S' on the 1932 art-deco post office's own tiles returns as the red standout letter of the new wordmark

Pentagram simplified the name to Frist Art Museum, set 'Frist' in a slender vintage 1930s font with the art-deco S standing out, and set the remaining text in the Cádiz sans-serif, with the S coloured red in signage and paraphernalia. Names like Nashville Museum of Art were considered but dropped to keep the reference to patron Thomas F Frist.

The institution got a shorter, clearer name and an identity built to not date; no metrics are reported.

Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts occupied a 1932 art-deco post office, and its wordy, indirect name — adopted to signal a family-friendly, community-oriented ethos — left people confused about what kind of venue it was. Pentagram's Austin studio was enlisted for a major rebranding.

The studio simplified the name to the Frist Art Museum, keeping the reference to patron Thomas F Frist after weighing names like Nashville Museum of Art, and rebuilt the identity around the building itself: a stylised 'S' mimicking a marking on one of the tiles of the 1932 structure, where the letter took the form of an elongated snake.

'Frist' is locked up in all-caps in a slender vintage 1930s font with the art-deco S standing out, the rest of the text set in the sans-serif typeface Cádiz, and the S coloured red in signage. Pentagram framed the goal as a modern identity, simple and confident, that would still feel fresh and undated a decade on.

The mark isn't retro pastiche — it is lifted from an artifact already preserved on the building.

Naming and identity were solved as one problem: the shorter name fixed the confusion the old logo couldn't.

Restraint — one red letter against a vintage font — is what makes a 'timeless' brief achievable.

When a name and an identity both fail, fix them together — and when your best asset is literally affixed to your walls, mine it instead of inventing something new.

The museum operates as the Frist Art Museum; the material records no follow-up beyond the 2018 rebrand.