Brand · Campaign · Exhibition
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.
Client
Annie Leibovitz & UBS
Role
Brand & Campaign Design
Year
2015–2017
Discipline
Brand · Campaign · Exhibition · Digital
WOMEN: New Portraits traveled to ten cities worldwide — a landmark Annie Leibovitz exhibition that needed a brand and digital presence worthy of the photographer and her subjects, coherent across every market yet sensitive to each.
The Challenge
A landmark Annie Leibovitz exhibition traveling to ten cities worldwide needed a brand and digital presence worthy of the photographer and her subjects, coherent across every market yet sensitive to each.
The Approach
I worked on the brand and campaign design for WOMEN: New Portraits, shaping the visual system and digital presence that carried the exhibition and its story across cities and audiences.
The Outcome
The work supported a global exhibition seen across ten cities and contributed to a body of work recognized with a Cannes Lions nomination in 2017.
Two decades in the making
Commissioned by UBS, WOMEN: New Portraits extended a project Leibovitz began two decades earlier with the writer Susan Sontag. Newly commissioned photographs of women — leaders, artists, activists, athletes, and pioneers — hung alongside images from the original series, presented in raw industrial spaces rather than polished galleries. The design brief was simple and severe: frame the work, then disappear.
The best identity work for an artist of this caliber is nearly invisible. It frames the work and then disappears.
The Photographer
A body of work, extended
Leibovitz has spent a career defining how we picture the famous and the powerful. WOMEN: New Portraits gathered that eye around a single question — who are the women shaping our world now — and carried it, unchanged, from one city to the next. The design simply had to be equal to it, and quiet enough to let it lead.
One exhibition, ten cities
From London to Zurich, the show moved through ten cities in barely a year — each stop free to the public, each accompanied by the Women for Women talks, with speakers including Gloria Steinem. The brand had to hold together across languages, venues, and audiences while feeling native to each.
- 01London
- 02Tokyo
- 03San Francisco
- 04Singapore
- 05Hong Kong
- 06Mexico City
- 07Istanbul
- 08Frankfurt
- 09New York
- 10Zurich
The design got out of the way — and Leibovitz’s women filled the room.
The Outcome
10
cities on the world tour
1999 → 2017
a project two decades in the making
Cannes Lions
nominee, 2017
The work supported a global exhibition seen across ten cities and contributed to a body of work recognized with a Cannes Lions nomination in 2017 — proof that the quietest design can carry the loudest work.