Annie Leibovitz × UBS: WOMEN

When one of the greatest photographers alive turns her lens on the women shaping our world, the design around it has one job: get out of the way, beautifully.

WOMEN: New Portraits was a landmark Annie Leibovitz exhibition, commissioned by UBS, extending a project she and Susan Sontag began two decades earlier. It traveled to ten cities around the world, from London to Tokyo to San Francisco, and gathered portraits of women across every field of achievement.

The Challenge

An exhibition of this stature carries weight. The brand and digital presence had to honor Leibovitz’s work and her subjects, stay coherent as it traveled across ten very different markets, and never overshadow the photography it existed to serve.

The Work

I worked on the brand and campaign design for the project, helping shape the visual system and digital presence that carried the exhibition city to city. The design lived in the space between the institutional trust of UBS and the intimate, unmistakable authority of Leibovitz’s portraits. You can still see traces of it in Vogue’s coverage of the tour.

The best identity work for an artist of this caliber is nearly invisible. It frames the work and then disappears.

The Outcome

The exhibition was seen across ten cities worldwide and connected to the broader Women for Women initiative, which included conversations with figures such as Gloria Steinem. The body of work around the campaign contributed to a Cannes Lions nomination in 2017.