The claim, cut as a stencil and set at full widthThe challenge
Serpentine North sits in a former gunpowder store on the edge of Kensington Gardens — a building most Londoners walk past without registering it as a gallery at all. The institution had a world-class programme and no street presence. It needed an identity that could be read at 40mph from the park road and still feel serious inside the room.
The solution
We treated the institution as a construction site that never signs off. The wordmark is cut as a stencil so it can be sprayed onto hoardings, taped to glass, or built at architectural scale in scaffolding. Signal red is used as site paint, not as brand colour. Everything is designed to look provisional on purpose — the programme changes, so the identity is built to be re-applied rather than preserved.
The building read at forty miles an hour from the park road
A site banner that states the position and stops there
The N given the whole page, the wordmark given a footnote
The mark applied as site paint, direct to the fabric of the building
The identity carried out of the building, set down at the threshold
Park-road wayfinding at the scale of a road sign
Four posters on a hoarding, the collection changing behind them
The print at thread level, where the stencil bridges do the work
Merch in the room, branding the size of a fingernailProject Information
A former gunpowder store is a difficult thing to brand. The architecture is listed, the signage rights are limited, and the building sits far enough from the road that a conventional fascia would be illegible before anyone reached it.
Rather than fight the constraint we adopted it. The identity assumes it will never be permanently mounted. Every element is designed to be applied temporarily — sprayed, taped, clamped, projected — and then removed when the exhibition changes.
The wordmark is drawn as an industrial stencil with visible bridges, at a width that stays readable when it is three metres tall on a hoarding or three centimetres on a wall label. Because it is a stencil, it can be physically cut and used by the install team without a designer present.
Signal red is specified as site paint rather than brand colour. It appears on floor markings, barrier tape and directional arrows, which means the institution reads as active work rather than finished display.
The result is an identity with no permanent state. Between shows the building returns to being a building. That impermanence is the argument: an institution whose programme is provisional should not present itself as a monument.
CAIO BARRETO
Creative Direction:
Caio Barreto
Design:
Júlia Bertoldi, Nara Vasconcelos, Kwame Osei, Marina Yuki
Motion Design:
Rafael Duarte, Ingrid Sollberg
Interactive Design:
Caio Bastos, Elif Demir
Strategy & Copywriting:
Priya Raghunathan, No Alves
Project Management:
Helena Braga
Account Direction:
Diego Fontenelle
Operations:
Sofia Krammer
Environmental Graphics:
Studio Vernier
Image Direction:
Nell Harrow, Bea Mendonça
Fonts:
Stanley Stencil, Untitled Sans — Custom / Klim Type Foundry
Year:
2026
Brand Identity · Concept
Self-initiated concept work. Serpentine North is not a client of CAIO BARRETO. Imagery generated, not photographed.