Pentagram’s Marina Willer has designed a new visual identity for Art UK, a charity that exists to record and showcase all the art owned by the UK in all of its public collections.

The UK is said to have one of the world’s largest public art collections with 212, 732 artworks by 38,370 artists displayed throughout 3,261 venues in England, Scotland and Wales.

These works are collectively owned by UK residents, but because of the large amount, and their geographical spread, few Britons know the true extent of their public art. Art UK has therefore digitised many of these artworks, making it easier for members of the public to see them in one virtual space.

“The identity expresses the theme of connectivity. It is flexible and elastic, indicating different points of access and ways of interpreting art. Each letter of the logotype is joined to another, reflecting how the public interacts with the Art UK website and the artworks within the collection,” explain the designers.

As well as creating a visual identity, Pentagram’s Naresh Ramchandani helped devise a new name for the charity.

“The purpose of the new name was to signify the organisation’s change of strategy and their shift away from printed catalogues to the current digitised collection,” says Pentagram.

The name Art UK is also accompanied by the end line, ‘Welcome to the nation’s art’.

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