CIFO
A foundation is not a collection. It is a lens.
WHAT WE DID
Creative directionBranding and identityStrategyWebsiteDigital designVideo productionPhotographyExhibition graphicsPrint
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The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation was founded by Ella Fontanals-Cisneros to support contemporary Latin American artists and to move cultural exchange across borders through exhibitions, grants and commissions.
Twenty years in, it is one of the most respected art foundations in the region. Her eye for curation, and her commitment to Latin America's cultural capital, built it.
CIFO had long held a prestigious position inside the art world. Its digital presence and brand narrative lacked the coherence, sophistication and modern aesthetic that matched its curatorial impact.
The foundation needed a platform and a storytelling approach that could hold two things at once: Ella's refined vision, and the untapped creative energy of a whole region, without losing clarity for a global audience who arrive knowing neither.
Her legacy is not about collecting. It is about revealing.
An art foundation's identity has one obligation before any other: never compete with the art. So the system is built from restraint. A single accent, a disciplined grid, generous white, and typography that reads as an institution rather than as a season.
Inside that restraint the programme can be loud. Exhibitions, the grants and commissions programme, the collection and the twenty year record each get their own voice, and none of them needs a sub brand to be heard.
Installation photography, performance and video documentation across the exhibition programme, produced so the archive is usable rather than decorative.
A curator looking for the collection. An artist looking for the grants and commissions programme. A collector or journalist looking for what is on now.
The site is organised so each of them lands one click from what they came for, and leaves having seen the other two.
The team I trust with my brands.
The foundation's digital ecosystem now matches the sophistication of its mission, and draws in collectors, curators and cultural collaborators who were never going to arrive through the art world alone.
CIFO speaks the language of contemporary art now. Not only visually, but emotionally and intellectually.
