KEPT.

An identity for a museum of things nobody threw away, and the reasons they kept them. Self-initiated.

Scope

Brand Identity & Guidelines

Client

KEPT (self-initiated)

Duration

Self-initiated

Year

2026

The Tag Is the Institution

(01)

People don't keep things. They keep reasons.

KEPT is a small museum in a former hardware store in Brooklyn. It takes in one ordinary object per person, but only with a written reason for keeping it. Three lines, no more.

The category leads with the object and dresses it in nostalgia. We went the other way, into the language of the people who handle collections. Registrars tie a numbered tag to everything that enters a museum, so the tag became the whole identity: the logo, the ticket, the caption and the sign outside are all the same tag. The front carries the name and the accession number. The back carries the reason, in the donor's own words.

A reason that does not fit is never cut by the museum. The donor gets a fresh tag and tries again.

A Registrar's System

(02)

Every colour is a material a registrar handles daily.

Six lockups from building sign to favicon, with clear space, minimum sizes and misuse rules. An accession number, KP.2026.0147, that does the work of a tagline. A palette taken from the storeroom: tag manila, archival box grey, registrar's ink, stamp blue, and a red used only when something is returned, struck through but kept in the register.

One typeface in three voices. The museum speaks in Archivo upright, the registrar writes in IBM Plex Mono, and the donor's words are the only italic in the system. Every text pairing is checked against WCAG 2.1 contrast; manila on box grey measures 2.9:1 and is never used for text.

Four movements, all borrowed from what a tag physically does: swing and stamp, turn, count, drop.

Everything Is a Tag

(03)

Built to get people to write.

Staff cards carry, on the back, the one thing each person has kept. The deed of gift was designed first, because it is the most important object in the building. Rooms are named for kinds of keeping: by accident, for later, for someone else, against advice.

The opening campaign is three posters and five hundred blank tags tied around the neighbourhood; fill one in and it becomes your ticket. Online, donating takes three steps and ends with your own accession number. The shop sells archival boxes with a label holder for it.

Concept, strategy and direction: Keon Hwui Kim. Production: Moc Mallen Design Team. KEPT is a self-initiated concept, not a real institution. Made with AI tools under direction; in-situ photographs are composites on CC0 stock images.