Harley-Davidson Museum
New Life For a Historic Brand
Milwaukee hosts Harley-Davidson’s $75 million, 130,000-square-foot museum complex, showcasing over 450 motorcycles and thousands of artifacts, presenting Harley-Davidson’s comprehensive history. Pentagram joined the team in an unprecedented engagement with three Pentagram partners: Architect James Biber designed the buildings, Abbott Miller designed and curated the permanent exhibition spaces, and Michael Bierut’s team did, well, everything else. Over the course of three years, we designed the museum’s brand, signage, restaurant, and shop swag.
Additional credits:
Pentagram
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With such historical relevance and fanfare comes great responsibility. The challenge was to create something iconic that faithfully represents the history of Harley while breathing new life into the next generation.
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Harley-Davidson’s brand genius was trademarking its signature sound in 1994. We wanted to represent that big, deep-throated, somewhat syncopated vibration into a visual pattern, which we called the “rumble” pattern. It was created using key phrases from Harley history, then applied to endless materials for the gift-shop and throughout the museum.
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With biweekly visits to the construction site, we worked extensively with all of Harley’s stakeholders and vendors to flawlessly execute everything from a giant 500 pound metal mesh sign to the smallest logo embossing on leather tags.
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To this day, the Harley-Davidson Museum is a key cultural and historical attraction in Milwaukee. It attracts an estimated 300,000 visitors annually, and ranks number 5 in tourist attraction in Milwaukee according to TripAdvisor.
