The primary purpose of graphic design is the structuring of information. A secondary purpose is providing an easily distinguishable visual identity, that in some way reflects the values, meaning or purpose of the thing that is designed.
With this in mind I would like to point out some examples of a worrying and somewhat foolish trend that I've noticed in the arts, where this secondary purpose of interesting or quirky visual identities is given priority over the primary purpose of legibility.
One of the most extreme examples is the Bonnefanten museum in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Their old logo was a very simple wordmark that was at times combined with an outline of the tower of the museum building:
Their new logo is a variable typeface that's composed from various elements found in the building:
This logo is most often presented in colour on a coloured background. Without a recognisable word shape, this logo severely inhibits comprehension, which is exacerbated by the use of various colours, which decreases contrast. For a logo per se this wouldn't be too bad, as a logo is still mostly recognised as a single form, rather than a legible text. But in the case of the Bonnefanten museum, this kind of lettering is also used in other parts of the website, where legibility very much becomes an issue.
Broadly speaking, the use of coloured texts and/or backgrounds is becoming increasingly common on the websites of various art institutions. See for example the website of KM21, heden, 1646 and Page not Found, all located in the Hague:
I'm sure the owners are very happy with their edgy and peculiar colour schemes, but to stare at such intense colours on a screen is very straining to the eyes. It's therefore almost impossible for anyone to actually read more than a few words on such a web page. And as I still believe that art is related to the intellect, this makes such choices highly problematic.
However, it can be argued that nobody does much reading on the web anyway, so that these extreme design choices are justified. Unfortunately, I've also seen such colour schemes be used on official documents, such as the Van Abbemuseum's policy plan for 2025–2028. This document was also divided in short columns of only ~20 characters, so that for every other line a hyphen was required. Such narrow columns are suitable for tabloid journalism that uses short words and appeals to short attention spans, but not for fifty-page documents on museum policy.
In this particular example, ironically concerned with accessibility, the two colours have very little contrast. This can be seen most clearly when the image is desaturated and the text subsequently disappears almost completely. This makes reading this text difficult for anybody and for some people downright impossible.
WebAIM, a web-accessibility initiative that was founded over 25 years ago, provides a tool to check colour combinations for their contrast and legibility. The combination that the Van Abbemuseum uses here clearly fails their guidelines.
It must be said however, that on their website the Van Abbemuseum does provide an optional high contrast mode, where all colour is removed from backgrounds and text. They also provide functional screen reading options, which is a rarity. So where they come up short in their policy plan, they do practice what they preach on their website.
Unfortunately there are many other institutions who don't think legibility is important for them, even if they stick to the high contrast of black text on a white background.
I've seen many visual identities of art institutions that use on some kind of cut up letters for their texts. As an overall wordshape is far more important in reading comprehension than the placement of individual letters, this makes reading this kind of text once again very cognitively demanding.
Examples are, among others, the Fondation Pernod Ricard, Melly, Casco Art Institute and Lafayette Anticipations:
Others use a legible font, but then negate this with some kind of unnecessary 'clever' additions. A prime example is the visual identity of Shimmer in Rotterdam.
The addition the designer has made is to place a shaded box around some punctuation marks. This is potentially an interesting, and possibly even helpful, addition to long-form texts. Yet Shimmer regularly falls into the artworld trap of generating lists rather than reasoned arguments, so that the overabundant punctuations instead create a lot of distracting visual noise.
Another trend I've noticed is that many custom typefaces go overboard with their serifs. A serif is there to help you recognise the shape of the letter, yet these serifs have such complicated and unusual forms they actually reduce legibility.
That's not a 'j' in the upper example, that's an 'i' with an epileptic tumor.
There are also a number of websites that look alright on a phone, but become poorly programmed disproportional messes on desktop computers. The most recent example I've personally encountered is the website of KIN, but there are many others. This phenomenon mainly concerns the larger commercial galleries, but it also affects public institutions. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is a good example of a website that is just awful to navigate no matter what device you use.
Although I feel like I've given more than enough examples already, I would like give you one more example that's particularly terrible and where a bunch of bad practices come together. On the About page of the website of Sternberg Press, a 'publishing house of art and cultural criticism', the multicoloured text simply disappears under a sea of red if you select with your pointer. Highlighting text is a commonly used aid when reading on screens, so it's quite amusing that this text becomes invisible when people attempt to read it.
As these trends reduce legibility of the most basic forms of communication, they are detrimental to art when it is considered an intellectual activity and highlight the superficial and unthinking approach of many art institutions.
Of course, there are also many institutions that do employ graphic design for the clear communication of information, in addition to providing a distinguishable visual identity. I can't think of any comprehensive examples right now, but I'm sure they're out there.
Therefore I would like to end with two cases that many art institutions could learn from.
The first is the Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface that was created, and distributed for free, by the Braille Institute of America. This typeface is made with legibility as its focus, and the result is notable for its usability in a great number of cases. It's an excellent example of how being distinguishable doesn't have to come at the cost of clarity.
The second is the approach IBM has taken to their graphic design. The company has had a strong focus on the visual identity of the documents that support their products since the 1960's, wherein readability was an important aspect from the beginning. Relatively recently they made their in-house typeface IBM Plex freely available and provide a lot of background information on the principles of their design on their website.
Addition on April 20, 2025:
The previous website of the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium:
The current website of the rebranded 'Masereel' in Kasterlee, Belgium:
