ArtPhilly
Bringing Art to Life
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity
- Brand Activation
- Website
- Arts & Culture
A Canvas Stretching City Wide
ArtPhilly produces, presents, and promotes contemporary arts that celebrate and spotlight the diverse cultural identities of Philadelphia. We helped them refine that gigantic idea into a highly orchestrated, festival-based arts organization that found its unique place among the art scene in Philly. We got there through strategic planning and consensus building across arts & culture leaders and artists across our city. It led us to our place within the highly subjective, sometimes elitist, and wildly diverse art scene in Philly. Once we found our foundations, we needed a brand identity that captured that incredible energy and vibrancy that our city’s neighborhoods and artists provide.
There’s Always an Opening
Our strategic work led us to a single thought — ArtPhilly provides transformative arts & culture experiences that transform perspectives of Philadelphia. This promise inspired the curation of work and the vision for the identity surrounding it. We needed every artist’s voice to be seen and heard and to crack open opportunities for their work to be felt by audiences that never had the opportunity before.
City As Gallery
The visual system was inspired by a wildly diverse gallery wall you’d see at The Barnes coupled with the structured geography of our city grid. It gave us the opportunity to represent artists you never thought would be in the same room (or gallery) and do it all within a highly flexible system used across the city. The custom logotype was born out of the same thinking: a wild mixture of voices and talents that somehow work together to create the whole.
“As a start up, working with J2 helped us truly discover ourselves -visually and verbally. They challenged us and we challenged them and this back and forth led to a brand identity that is a perfect match for our ambitions.”
Bill Adair — Executive Director, ArtPhilly
Reframing Perspectives
ArtPhilly’s inaugural “What Now?” Festival will launch in 2026 as part of our country’s 250th birthday, where Philadelphia will be center stage. The intent of the provocation is to interrogate our country’s founding and where we go from here. We built a festival identity to flex across all the possible places they’ll need to promote and tell that story.
Words of Art
The voice of ArtPhilly was born out of the proud and playful spirit of our city. We used our past to frame our intentions for the future and create a world where we can see art everywhere. The voice captures the larger than life ambition for the organization and its ongoing impact on Philadelphia’s Arts & Culture scene as we ask people to follow their art.
