Description
Overview
As a creative strategist, I led a comprehensive messaging overhaul for a contemporary art gallery in Berlin, Kreuzberg, including rebranding key texts across platforms (website, press, and social). My role involved sharpening the gallery’s voice to better reach collectors, press, and the general public, aligning communication with its curatorial vision, and crafting a messaging guide to ensure consistent, impactful language across all touchpoints.
Deliverables
Messaging guide with brand voice, tone, key messages, and differentiators.
Revised website and social media copy (About, Exhibitions, Press).
Strategic press release templates.
Social media tone framework.
Summary
JERGON is, in a sense, an ideal client: a gallery with a highly-developed mission and sophisticated visual identity that nonetheless struggled with its messaging. Its texts were too theoretical and academic to effectively engage a broader audience, as well as collectors and the press.
As always, I began by seeking to understand the client's mission and goals in their own words, through extensive conversation with the gallerist / owner and an audit of the existing web copy. This became the basis for translating this messaging into more effective copy: clear, succinct, high-impact, and directed towards its target audience. Throughout, I kept the tone and messaging true to the gallery's identity: sophisticated, intellectually engaged and socially minded.
Example of Work – Excerpt from "Key Differentiators"
More than a gallery, Jergon is a hub for the unique form of dialogue created by art.
Jergon promotes artistic freedom and experimentation that challenges common rules.
Jergon doesn’t just sell art, but has a social mandate. It promotes both the spontaneous, plural kind of community that gathers around art, believing it bridges divides within society, and the uncommon and important dialogue this community generates.
This social mandate extends also to artists. Jergon is an incubator for dedicated and talented artists who want to enjoy greater freedom of creativity and expression, allowing them to take risks and break into broader exposure.
Example of Work – Key Texts, Before / After
Instagram Bio
Before:
Jergon
Art Gallery
Jergon is a contemporary art gallery in Berlin dedicated to experimentation.
Wrangelstraße 76
Berlin
After:
Jergon
Art Gallery
Art Gallery in Berlin and hub for the unique form of dialogue created by art.
Contemporary Art & Photography
Exhibitions ⏐ Talks ⏐ Performances
Wrangelstraße 76
Berlin
About (Website and LinkedIn)
Before:
JERGON exists both as a physical and online space centered on art promotion, debate and sale. JERGON scouts, fosters and supports primarily Berlin-based artists both emerging and mid-career by virtue of its knowledge of the territory and the city’s very nature. Handpicking talents and attesting their value, it carefully reflects Berlin’s internationality and status as one of the world’s most vibrant art prisms. Originally focused on photography it later broadened the scope of its activities to painting, video and performance art. Combining bold idealism with virtuous financial support for artists as well as far-sighted, rewarding investments for buyers, it pursues a paradigm shift led by the motto ‘art, regardless’ and lays the ground for what comes next for contemporary art.
After:
The name Jergon combines two words: 1) Jargon, the English word for the language inside a community, and 2) Ergon, the Greek word for work, as both an action and a product. Taken together, the name encapsulates the gallery’s belief in art’s social power: bringing diverse artists and audiences together around artworks and generating discussion and thought across societal divides.
Jergon promotes this unique kind of artistic community and dialogue by existing as a hub for contemporary visual art as well as related performances, talks and events by artists, curators, musicians, and intellectuals. Exhibitions and events are organized, curated, and staged by founder and creative director Nicola Patruno, a curator, cultural critic, and gallerist.
A gallery, a hub for artistic dialogue – Jergon is also an incubator for artists. Featuring a diverse roster of artists from Berlin and beyond, Jergon is committed to finding and supporting talent dedicated to a lifetime of art, ensuring rewarding investments for its customers. It assists gifted and committed artists break into broader exposure, encouraging them to take risks and experiment. It does so through mentorship, the organization of solo and group exhibitions, and scouting activities such as open calls for artists. Jergon’s commitment to diversity and equality is reflected in the nature of these outreach activities, conducting blind open calls, for example, ignoring biographical and personal information.