Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum hired Pentagram so its brand could match a Snøhetta extension

The Joslyn was the cultural hub for Midwestern towns regardless of how much fine art visitors knew. Its old logotype, locked up with a pictorial mark, was 'traditional and respectable, but also very much tied to the past'.

A world-class building deserves a world-class brand: hire Pentagram's Eddie Opara — beating Nebraska studios in the pitch — for a bespoke, angular typographic identity.

Eddie Opara's Pentagram team won a competitive review against multiple studios, some in Nebraska, and led the strategic and visual rebrand: a bespoke typographic system, an angular logotype and a colour scheme that made a museum brochure stand out in a mail pile. It launched just after the Snøhetta extension (with Omaha's Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture) was completed.

The new brand was live by December 2024, launched shortly after the new extension was completed. No metrics were reported.

When Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum completed a new extension by architecture firm Snøhetta, partnering with Omaha-based Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture, it also rebuilt its brand. The museum hired Pentagram — Eddie Opara's team winning the work in a competitive review against multiple studios, some local — to lead the strategic and visual rebrand.

The old identity was traditional and respectable but tied to the past. The new one is a bespoke typographic system with an angular logotype and a colour scheme distinctive enough that writer Jason Tselentis noticed a brochure 'in her mail pile' while visiting his mother in Omaha that December.

Board of Governors vice chair Dusty Davidson made the ambition explicit: 'Great cities have world-class art institutions. Snøhetta brought world-class architecture to Omaha, and we wanted a brand design that could be world-class.'

The decision is the story: a Midwest museum explicitly benchmarked its brand against world-class design and hired for it.

The rebrand is sequenced to architecture — identity launched with the Snøhetta extension so building and brand make one argument.

The design result is specific: bespoke typography, an angular logotype, a colour scheme that wins the mail pile.

Institutions in overlooked regions buy credibility deliberately: 'Snøhetta brought world-class architecture to Omaha, and we wanted a brand design that could be world-class.'

Tselentis spotted the new-look brochure in Omaha in December 2024; Pentagram posted the work weeks before Fast Company's February 2025 piece, calling the glow-up a notable investment in a region whose cultural contributions are often overlooked. No metrics were reported.