Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian's National Design Museum, reopened following a three-year renovation that restores the historic Andrew Carnegie Mansion and increases the museum’s exhibition space by 60 percent.

A vibrant and contemporary signage and environmental graphics program was created for the mansion’s exterior and interior. The program includes the exterior identity, exhibition directories, wayfinding and donor recognition graphics. The Andrew Carnegie Mansion is a historic landmark and cannot be physically altered, so the team found ways to creatively integrate the signage into the building in an impactful but non-intrusive way.

Environmental graphics, signage and identity system for Cooper Hewitt utilize customized characters from the wordmark, and have been fully developed into a new typeface. The typeface is used throughout the museum's signage and graphics and is also available free to the public, who are encouraged to utilize it in their own designs. (To date, the typeface has been downloaded over 9,000 times.)