Branding and Exhibition Design
The Florida Atlantic University Galleries required a creative partner to architect the visual identity and spatial layout for a text-heavy, historically dense exhibition mapping a century of Jewish community impact.
The Flight Plan
Scope of work:
Art Direction & Branding – Visual Identity and typographic systems, asset curation and production, FAU branding guidelines and ADA compliance;
Promotional Design– Invitational Postcard & Poster;
Spatial/Environmental & Layout Design – Wall Layout Designs, Text placement, walkthrough blueprint.
The Brief & Objective
The Client Directive: I was brought onboard to bridge the gap between rigorous historical preservation and contemporary visual design. Faced with extensive imagery and text, strict institutional mandates and ADA compliance, my mission was to transform raw educational assets into a highly engaging, visually structured, and entirely accessible museum experience.
Design Strategy
Historical Continuity & Color Strategy Canvas: Collaborated on an organic, earthy color palette directly inspired by the Spanish Revival architecture prevalent in 1920s South Florida, establishing an immediate, authentic sense of place and era.
Typographic Heritage: Selected Frank Ruhl Libre for headings and Heebo for copy blocks—a deliberate choice to utilize typefaces created by influential Jewish designers, bridging historical legacy with clean, modern readability.
Cultural Sensitivity & Mosaic Motifs: Engineered custom, mosaic-inspired wall graphics as both a central aesthetic system and a structural metaphor, visually reflecting the themes of community building and cultural interconnectedness.
Accessible Visual Hierarchy: Solved the challenge of a text-heavy archive by organizing dense historical timelines into a highly structured, scannable typographic system that respects both cultural depth and strict ADA guidelines.
The Flight Path
The Flight Log
CLIENT – Florida Atlantic University Galleries
ROLE – Art Director & Graphic Designer
TOOLS – Adobe InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop
PROJECT TIMELINE
December 2025
Established the core visual system, typography guidelines
& color story for the exhibition;
Designed Save the Date email and developed initial identity concepts for the FAU Gallery’s approval.
January 2026
Designed the exhibition catalogue, promotional postcards, posters applying the typographic guidelines across all print formats;
Scaled established visual system up to create large-format wall graphics, environmental signage and displays to be placed inside the physical gallery space.
Dani Galindo - Art Director & Creative Strategist 