One question, written badly four times

The museum’s brief arrived as a page and a half. It asked for a campaign, a new audience and a refreshed identity, in that order. Before we drew anything, we tried to turn it into one sentence a visitor could say out loud.

The first draft was “How do we make the museum relevant to young people?” Too vague: relevant to what? The second, “How do we get under-25s through the door?”, assumed the door was the point. The third named a channel before it named a problem. The fourth was close, but it was still our question, not theirs.

The version we kept, “How does a city museum win back the under-25s?”, has two useful words in it. “City” put the answer outside the building. “Back” admitted that they had once come. Everything in the loan programme follows from those two words, and none of it needed a new logo.