The Arts at Penn is an initiative dedicated to increasing visibility of and engagement with arts and culture across the University of Pennsylvania's campus and global community. By bringing together dozens of institutions, centers, colleges, and independent groups under a unified banner, it's emblematic of Penn's broader institutional priorities: strengthening communities, cultivating leaders, and collaborating across divisions.
The challenge was fragmentation. Penn's extraordinary arts ecosystem—spanning world-class museums, performance venues, academic programs, and student organizations—lacked a central point of discovery. In close partnership with the Office of the Vice Provost, we developed a distinctive identity and comprehensive digital platform that centralizes events, exhibitions, collections, and resources, making Penn's arts community visible, accessible, and cohesive for the first time.
Arts at Penn Penn's new home for arts and culture.
Section 1.Making the arts discoverable
To centralize content from dozens of organizations—each with their own calendars, systems, and publishing workflows—we developed automated content aggregation and publishing tools that relieved pressure on a small administrative team while making thousands of items available for students, faculty, partners, and visitors from around the world.
Laying the foundation
We spoke with leaders from across Penn to surface dreams and concerns, then facilitated alignment around requirements and recommendations.
Managing complexity
Integrating data from over a dozen legacy sources required mapping content and data structures across university IT teams and third-party vendors, then building transformation logic that maintains data integrity.
Working with Brooklyn Digital Foundry has been a genuinely positive experience. Their team was thoughtful, professional, and deeply collaborative throughout the process—anticipating our needs, responding quickly and thoroughly, and approaching the work as a true partnership. They helped us realize our vision for the Arts at Penn website with care, creativity, and a shared commitment to excellence.
Section 2.Creating compelling experience
We drew the identity's color palette from Penn's renowned collection of Josef Albers works, creating a visual system that honors the university's artistic heritage while feeling contemporary and energetic. For type, we chose Diatype and Tobias fonts to deliver warmth in condensed forms ideal for lengthy titles. The result is an identity that stands out within Penn's ecosystem while respecting institutional brand standards.
Building frames for art
Colored borders become structural elements in the platform—framing content, establishing hierarchy, and creating dynamic compositions that adapt to and celebrate different content types.
Section 3.Delivering sustainable solutions
We build systems that balance exploration with efficiency. Here, dynamic layouts encourage discovery while clear navigation helps visitors locate specific content quickly. WCAG AA-compliance welcomes all audiences, flexible admin tools empower a small team to manage thousands of events, and modern architecture protects Penn's long-term investment.
Building on success
We're proud to continue our relationship with Penn into its sixth year, with each new partnership deepening trust and helping the school advance its ambitious mission.
