Foam, Amsterdam’s celebrated photography museum, has revealed a refreshed brand identity and visual system designed by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. The overhaul establishes a unified look across the museum’s physical, digital, and editorial platforms – including its iconic Foam Magazine – while reasserting its dual desire to be deeply rooted in Amsterdam while remaining global in ambition.
For a museum long known for pushing photography’s boundaries, this evolution was both philosophical and visual. Wieden+Kennedy’s brief was to find coherence between Foam’s multiple identities – such as its gallery, publication, and growing online presence – without dulling the creative friction that defines it.
The answer lay in the museum’s name itself. The wordmark ‘Foam’, originally a fusion of ‘Fotografiemuseum’ and ‘Amsterdam’, became the foundation of the new system.
Visually, it splits and reconnects, embodying the tension between local roots and global reach. “The new identity challenges the viewer with unconventional approaches where clear hierarchy coexists with tension and disruption,” says the design team. They describe the look as editorial and typographic, explaining how the design language brings the magazine’s distinctive energy back into the museum’s wider brand.
Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam’s design director, Alex Thursby-Pelham, notes that the project held a special resonance. She says: “Foam is an Amsterdam cultural highlight for everyone in the design team, so to be able to collaborate with them was an absolute dream.
“To be able to connect with the city we live and work in through this project made it even more special.”
A key component of the new identity is motion, which is now a defining element of Foam’s visual language for the first time. The design team introduced principles of ‘Resisting Flow’ and ‘Angular Tension’ to bring a sense of deliberate, photographic friction to the brand’s movement.
Rather than smooth transitions or standard animations, the system plays with pause and clarity, echoing the act of viewing a still image. The refreshed identity made its debut through visuals for Blommers & Schumm: Mid-Air, currently on show at Foam until February 2026.
The redesign also coincides with the launch of the global campaign for Foam Talent 2026 – the museum’s platform for emerging image-makers. Developed by W+K’s Design Studio and creative accelerator programme The Kennedys, the campaign channels the new brand principles into a constellation-like visual narrative.
Each pin on the campaign map represents a voice within Foam’s international network, captured under the powerful call to action: “Let the world see what you see.”
Foam’s head of marketing and communications, Irene Bakker, said the refresh represents a pivotal moment in the museum’s evolution. She says: “This brand refresh reflects Foam’s ongoing evolution, uniting our museum, magazine, and digital platforms under one cohesive identity that embodies how we engage with photography today.
“With motion now central to our design, the identity merges photography and design in expressive, contemporary ways – reaffirming our belief in photography’s power to challenge, inspire, and connect.”
The rebrand has now rolled out across Foam’s physical spaces, online platforms, and out-of-home media in Amsterdam.
