About The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia was established in 1991 through a bequest by artist John Power to the University of Sydney. The gallery is dedicated to exhibiting, collecting and interpreting contemporary art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, and around the world. The MCA prides itself on innovative programming and ground-breaking exhibitions of contemporary art.
The Challenge: Achieving Scale and Consistency for Exhibit Content
Without having an internal development or web design team to rely on for special projects, the MCA found it difficult to scale content creation consistently for their exhibitions.
“For a big exhibit, we would sometimes hire a web agency to build a custom microsite, but for other exhibitions we wouldn’t produce much at all perhaps just marketing copy on an exhibition web page,” says Gabby Shaw, Digital Manager at the MCA. Additionally, they were licensing an ePub platform that supported iPad-only content, but they weren’t using it systematically.
Gabby wanted to change MCA’s inconsistent approach to content creation, but she knew she’d need the right platform in place to make it happen. She began looking for digital storytelling tools that could provide creative flexibility without requiring a heavy development investment.
The Solution: One Platform to Serve All Needs
Gabby came across Ceros in 2013 after searching around for digital content creation tools. She was instantly drawn to Ceros’ flexibility, code-free design studio, seamless multimedia support, and cross-platform compatibility.
“We love how flexible Ceros is,” Gabby says. “There’s no set navigation or templating, and the canvas doesn’t force you into a specific page format, which can be very limiting. We’ve also been able to create different versions of experiences for gallery and web use without a lot of duplicate work.
With Ceros, the MCA was able to provide an enhanced digital experience to support more of their exhibitions, eliminating the need for custom development for a microsite or being restricted to their usual website page templates. “Now, we can focus on the content and design instead of investing in bespoke code for every project. It suits us as we’re driven by visual experiences.”
The Results: Flexible, Engaging Content in the Gallery and on the Web
The MCA’s first Ceros project was an iPad display for their exhibit Chuck Close: Print, Process, and Collaboration, and it was also available online. Over course of 3 months, the experience drove:
• 37,870 page views
• 25,240 video plays
• 3 minute average time on page
They also won a Museums Australia Multimedia and Publication Design Award 2015 for their Chuck Close Program Website built in Ceros, and scored a Highly Commended mark in the Multimedia category for their exhibit display.
Over the past year, the MCA has also used Ceros to create interactive education materials for their website and a large touch-screen experience situated within the gallery for their brand new exhibition, Primavera 2015.
“With just one designer, we can create unique content in a lean way that works for us.”