Village Green restructures Artnet’s brand world, with a future-proof colour-blocked grid system — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Artnet is where the art world meets. As a leading online resource for the international art market, it provides various tools, services, and resources for art enthusiasts, collectors, galleries, and institutions. While the platform’s audience had only grown over the years, its identity had gathered a bit of dust. So, when asked by Artnet, the London-based studio Village Green took on the task of reimagining its brand system. “Although Artnet had invested in a brand identity as recently as 2019, the existing system had become challenging for the internal team to use effectively. They needed a more intuitive and flexible solution that could be applied across a wide range of outputs, from day-to-day assets to larger campaigns,” says Lead Designer Tom Fearn. In addition to a more agile system, a key ask from Artnet was a wider, bolder colour palette to breathe new life into the brand, which had been anchored in orange and grey for some time. “While the previous identity was sophisticated and balanced, it required a high degree of design nuance, and over time, users had drifted from the brand guidelines. Our goal was to strike a balance between the worlds of art and luxury, bringing a more dynamic and approachable energy to the brand,” Fearn tells us.

As an established brand, Artnet’s logo held significant equity, so the team decided to retain it. They also held on to the brand’s typefaces, making only slight adjustments to ensure they worked perfectly with the updated brand. What changed was the visual system and the colour palette. To elevate its look, Village Green handpicked a palette of bright punchy hues which is now everpresent throughout the brand.

To give the whole brand a facelift, the team leaned towards a grid system to add structure. “The grid system was developed to accommodate the wide variety of artworks and imagery Artnet showcases, allowing them to stand on their own. One challenge Artnet faced was combining imagery with typography (including captions, pricing details, and dates) in a way that maintained legibility and balance,” notes Fearn. “This often led to repositioning elements or sacrificing consistency to avoid issues like colour clashes or copyright complications. We used this as a starting point to create a versatile grid and container system that separated the logo, artwork, and copy clearly. Not only did this approach improve legibility, but it also provided the space necessary to give the logo more prominence, while introducing the expanded colour palette Artnet had requested.”

The modular structure made it easier for the internal team to create a variety of graphic outputs. It also made the brand more versatile and gave Artnet’s team more flexibility to choose how the brand would show up in the world across its multiple avenues of business. “Whether creating long-form reports and presentations, or single-page adverts, the system ensures a consistent visual language. The introduction of multiple colour blocks and grid structures helps maintain a fresh and dynamic look across various formats,” says Fearn. “Graphs and charts, which are central to Artnet’s data analysis offering, were given individual styling that aligns with the brand.” Designed with agility in mind, the grid system meets Artnet’s both current and future needs, ensuring that the brand can evolve over time, without ever again veering away from the established guidelines.