MOCA builds its brand on the roof radical 宀 for Chinese-Australian stories (interview)

A new museum was fitting out Sydney's old Haymarket library, next to Chinatown, to open in 2023. R/GA engaged MOCA proactively in 2021, so this was brand creation rather than a refresh, against a backdrop of COVID-era xenophobia — Lowy Institute research found nearly one in five Chinese Australians threatened or attacked in 2020. The launch campaign had to introduce the brand, build community and drive donations ahead of the museum's reopening in late 2023.

Build the whole identity on 宀, the roof radical shared by 'home', 'safe' and 'ancestor' — a frame that keeps adapting to house new Chinese-Australian stories

R/GA crafted a contemporary logo around the roof radical 宀 from the Kangxi dictionary, chose blues, pinks and greens as a modern take on traditional ceramics instead of the expected red, paired Helvetica with Pingfang HK, and lit portraits with neon gels. The 'Stories From Home' launch featured prominent Chinese Australians — Incu founders Brian and Vincent Wu, producer-artist Rainbow Chan, artist Louise Zhang — with scripts, illustrations and content all made by the community. PUSH, a Chinese-Australian production company, shot a two-day film in Sydney, casting through family and community networks.

MOCA opened to the public in 2023, and the campaign carried the brand across film, a pop-up exhibition in the old library and a digital content series toward the reopening push between late 2023 and early 2024; no audience or donation figures are reported in the interview.

In an LBB 'Behind the Work' interview, R/GA APAC executive creative director Ben Miles, associate creative director Sam McGuiness and PUSH Media creative director Jonathon Lim recall how the Museum of Chinese in Australia (MOCA) got its brand. Miles says the conversation began with his brother-in-law Jon Wong over what a space for Chinese-Australian pride would have meant to them as kids, at the peak of pandemic-era race hate — he recalls relatives being spat at growing up, and cites Lowy Institute research that in 2020 nearly one in five Chinese Australians were threatened or attacked.

R/GA engaged MOCA proactively in 2021 and redefined the museum's role as a living home for stories rather than a static collection. The identity is built on the roof radical 宀, used in the words for home, safe and ancestor, acting as a dynamic frame both physical, in the pop-up exhibition, and digital, on the website. McGuiness describes the deliberate counter-stereotyping: blues, pinks and greens as a modern take on traditional ceramics instead of the expected red, Helvetica plus Pingfang HK for a neutral multi-language voice, and neon gel lighting to paint role models in a future-facing way.

The 'Stories From Home' launch campaign asked prominent Chinese Australians — Incu founders Brian and Vincent Wu, producer-artist Rainbow Chan, artist Louise Zhang — about home, with scripts, illustrations and on-screen talent drawn from the community. Lim says casting through family and community networks made talent easy to find; the shoot ran two days in Sydney, one morning in a studio, one morning in a house and two afternoons around Haymarket. The campaign was built to introduce the brand and encourage donations ahead of the museum reopening between late 2023 and early 2024.

The brand device is genuinely bilingual: 宀 reads as 'roof/home' inside Chinese characters and as a picture frame to everyone else, solving the museum's two-audience problem with one mark.

It shows identity work as narrative repair — the design brief answers documented race hate and the 'Where are you from?' microaggressions the team surfaced in research.

Counter-stereotyping is treated as a decision, not an accident: the team explains why it rejected red-heavy palettes and the static-museum convention.

Community-authored content — scripts, illustrations, casting — makes the authenticity claim structural rather than aspirational.

One character radical can carry an identity: pick a symbol that already reads as 'home', let it work across languages, and let the community author the content so authenticity is staffed, not claimed.

MOCA opened to the public in 2023 in the former Haymarket library, a building the community remembered as one of the only places to access Chinese-language periodicals. The pop-up exhibition lined the old library bays and shelves with the stories, knick-knacks and photos of Wu, Chan and Zhang to help the community follow the building's transition, and the campaign ran across commercial film, the pop-up and a digital content series into the reopening window between late 2023 and early 2024. The interview reports no visitor, membership or donation figures.