MOMI

The Museum of the Moving Image had a great problem: as the foremost museum about film, televisions, and all other forms of video and gaming, the boasted an extraordinary collection of history, interviews, criticism, and analyses available for free on their website – plus a wealth of information about what visitors could see in person at the museum in Astoria. But their website was outdated and hard to navigate. A cultural institution of this caliber needed an online experience worthy of its reach and influence.

HUB worked with a core team at the museum, including its director, chief curator, editorial director, and IT lead, to completely reimagine the online MOMI experience. This started with an in-depth analysis of the old site structure – over 60 unique pages, with content managed by several different museum leaders and sectors – and proposing a revised site map that would be more intuitive for a visitor to navigate. The old site lacked any easy connection between sections of the site, so our priorities included making sure a visitor could seamlessly move from a particular page of interest to other relevant content they may not have been seeking.

We then spent time constructing wireframes of secondary overview pages for the site – something that was missing on the old site – to test the hierarchy and flow of specific kinds of information that the museum wanted to highlight. This resulted in the creation of completely new sections for the wealth of online-only content that had previously been spread across many different parts of the old MOMI site, plus on a separate archive and several other external sites.

As a design challenge, the visual approach needed to balance a very energetic, dynamic brand (with lots of rich colors) and the desire for a simplified, sophisticated online experience. The final design employs simple elements and brings color into each page through small moments (buttons, menu bars, and images) that allows the content to be dominant. We also implemented an extensive events calendar to ensure visitors have easy access to the many special programs and screenings happening at the museum.

https://movingimage.org/