Swedish Academy of Realist Art (SARA) is a one-of-a-kind art school, located in Simrishamn, south Sweden. The school provides the highest level of training in realistic drawing and painting using traditional techniques and methods of the Renaissance, 18th and 19th-century European academies, as well as highly effective, self-developed teaching methods. The school values working only from life and the imagination in the pursuit of beauty and meaningful art, proudly embracing highly skilled hand-craftsmanship.

Studio Mnemonic was commissioned to develop a full rebrand of the school and a complete new website. We are currently working with the team at SARA rolling out the new identity and designing their communication material.

Therese Severinsen Marques, was during the project invited to be on the advisory board to the school which is a great honor.

History and tradition – with both feet in the 21st century

The starting point for a rebrand was born out of the redesign of the website and the necessity to have a logo that would be legible in all different situations. The old logo was difficult to apply with no flexibility for different formats, backgrounds and mediums.

Second reason was to take the opportunity to communicate the new energy and opportunities the school have. Even if the school is based in history and traditions is it always moving with the time we live in.

This story is perfectly captured in the new logo.

The logo features the acronym SARA in big, bold, but traditional lettering. The letters are laid on top of the guiding lines of The Vitruvian Man, the drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci. Included is also the golden ratio, symbolising the harmony, balance, and precision that underpin the teaching at the school.

We developed a main colour palette based on a modern and vibrant blue in partnership with a coral red. These two colours add a nice juxtaposition to the more traditional typeface and logo. A secondary colour palette was also developed inspired by the colours used in the many beautiful rooms of the school. This palette is used both on the website and other communication materials to match the artworks and give the identity further flexibility.

As most schools are SARA communicating in a number of channels but with little time and budget to spend on design of these products. We therefore designed and developed a set of templates including the logo, typeface and colour palette. The templates uses the identity typeface Freight in both its sans and serif version and the logo lock-up can be broken up in a ‘symbol’ and in a ‘word mark’ for more flexibility. The template-layouts can then be matched with the beautiful artworks and interior images that SARA constantly producing.

The goal has been to provide templates that is easy to use for a non-designer, but always paying respect to the art the students and teachers producing.

A big part of the project was also to design and developed a new website for SARA  sara-academy.se

We conducted user tests and research, as well as designed and developed the full site. The aim was to capture the unique feeling one experience when walking into the art school. We wanted to fill the website with beautiful images and artwork while communicating the heritage of the skills taught. All at the same time with an main goal to create a website with simple navigation, inspiring content and with an application form easy to fill in – perfectly suited an art school with high ambition.

After the launch of the website the school filled all their places on the three year program in Traditional Realist Drawing and Painting.