Designed for London

It’s an important time for the Museum, with a major relocation planned in the next couple of years from the current site at the Barbican to Smithfield. In parallel with the move, they’ve undertaken a major digital initiative to reimagine their website as a destination in its own right, as well as highlighting their fantastic permanent collections and driving more visits to both physical locations.

Torchbox led an extensive creative and visual design process for the new website, building on a body of UX research carried out by Webcredible in 2015. Our brief was to reinterpret the Museum of London brand for the contemporary digital space: embracing its inclusivity and appeal to families, while better representing its sophistication, irreverence, and relevance to the city's cultural dialogue. For maximum visual impact, we made the Museum's fabulous collections the centrepiece of our design.

Our design was implemented in the Museum's CMS by their internal development team, and the new website was launched in mid-April. We’re proud to have played a major part in shaping the end result: a vibrant, fully responsive website that showcases the breadth of the galleries, exhibits and events on offer. We worked hard to strike the right balance between elegance and fun, making the website engaging and easy to explore for users of any age or background. We also put together a library of design components to provide a visual framework for the website to grow and scale with the Museum’s ambitions. 

Fortunately – or unfortunately?! – our on-site user testing coincided with their Crime Museum Uncovered exhibition, so were able to ‘relax' between testing sessions by admiring a chilling selection of hangman’s ropes, murder weapons and, of course, Dr Crippen’s spade.

We’re looking forward to checking out the forthcoming Great Fire of London exhibition in July!