A forward-looking museum website celebrating black artists

Sector: Arts and culture case studies, Charity and not-for-profit case studies, Education case studies
URL: Visit the Future Legacies website (Opens in a new page)

Future Legacies is a recognition and celebration of black artists and their stories

About the client

The Fitzwilliam Museum houses a world-renowned collection of over half a million beautiful works of art, masterpiece paintings, and historical artefacts. We’ve been providing design enhancements, technical support and maintenance for the Fitzwilliam Museum website since 2022.

About the project

In 2023, the Fitzwilliam held the Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance exhibition to reflect on the museum’s connection to the transatlantic slave trade and to ask whose stories were being told through its art collection. The ‘Rise Up’ exhibition in 2025 was a follow-up to Black Atlantic and a continuation of the project.

To keep the stories of Black Atlantic and Rise Up alive, and with the aim of creating a fairer future for black artists, the museum created the Future Legacies website.

Project goals

We were asked to create a clean and contemporary design for the site that can house a wide variety of content types and provide a CMS that improves usability and flexibility for their content editors.

Design research

Following discussion with the Fitzwilliam team, I wanted to create a visual aesthetic that conveys confidence, whilst allowing the artists’ work to always be at the forefront.
After researching black zines such as NYLON, SULA and GAL-DEM, I set out a bold colour palette and the typography direction.

A collection of reference material from culture, fashion and zines during the desktop research

Colour, typography, and visual cues

Informed by our research, we next created our colour palettes, ensuring they are accessible and appropriate. We wanted our typography choices to convey strength and have impact, settling on Google’s font ‘Outfit’ for our headings with H1 in uppercase.

We also wanted to incorporate a graphical element that subtly echoes the theme of transatlantic migration without dominating the content. The site design has bold areas of colour that follow one another. We incorporated an optional wave motif which, when added by the content editors, alters the linear banding.

Image showing proposed colour palette and typography choices informed by the research.

We worked alongside the Fitzwilliam team to create a bold, vibrant website to present a broad spectrum of content – from stories and interviews to research and sounds – of black artists, thinkers, and creatives.

Layouts of the new site during the design phase. — Screens during the design phase.

Bespoke build for the CMS

Most of the content editors for Future Legacies aren’t digital experts. But they are curators, and they want to see their stories presented in an engaging way.

We modelled the CMS to ensure a consistent look and feel, while also allowing editors flexibility and creativity when creating pages. For example, images can be full width, centred, or side by side. Video and audio components can be added. A wave motif can be used to add visual dynamism.

We trained the content editors on how to use the CMS and provided a recording of the training session, which they can refer to any time for a quick refresher.

Future Legacies is a forward-looking website which is engaging for audiences and scalable for the museum team. It’s a robust, curatable platform to share stories now and in the future.

Ian and the Studio 24 team brought to life our vision of a dynamic, engaging and accessible platform that brings together a community of Black artists, thinkers and creatives and showcases their art, writings, conversations and more. Our ideas and feedback were accommodated at every stage and we couldn’t be happier with the bold, colourful and contemporary final design.

Being able to work on another website for the Fitz and have another opportunity to support them in their work and elevate black artists is an incredible privilege.