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To coincide with the development of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s new Sydney headquarters, the RBA Museum began exploring how its identity and visitor experience could be revitalised across both its physical installation and digital presence.
Code and Visual was engaged during the early stages of this broader initiative to independently investigate and visualise possible creative and user-experience directions for the Museum website.
The consultation gave us an opportunity to apply our experience across the arts, cultural and national-institution sectors, helping the Museum consider how its brand, collection and stories might come to life online.
The existing Museum website was not structured to support the planned expansion of its content. Subject areas could be difficult to navigate, important material was often presented through dense pages of text, and the experience lacked the visual and interactive qualities needed to engage a broad contemporary audience.
The Museum planned to develop new online content between 2026 and 2028 around four central themes:
Who is the RBA and why do we need it?
How have we exchanged value over time?
What is money?
What is it like to experience the economy?
The future digital experience would need to improve storytelling and discoverability, engage younger audiences, support teachers and students, and make the Museum’s collection more accessible.
It also needed to feel contemporary and engaging without compromising the authority of the institution or the meaning of historically and culturally sensitive content.
We began by reviewing comparable museum, cultural and institutional websites, alongside other digital experiences that demonstrated strong visual storytelling, intuitive navigation and immersive use of media.
This research was supported by a customised discovery questionnaire developed for the RBA Museum team. Using a human-led design approach, we examined the needs of internal stakeholders and key audience groups, applying empathy to understand their priorities, expectations and pain points.
The discovery process highlighted a desire for an experience that felt cleaner, more visual and easier to navigate. Visitors should leave feeling inspired, curious and connected, while the experience should help challenge the perception that the Bank and its history are inherently dry or inaccessible.
From this foundation, we developed three distinct creative directions for consideration. Each explored a different way the RBA Museum brand could operate online and was supported by visual references, interface examples, motion inspiration and early mockups.
Rather than prescribing a finished solution, the directions were created to facilitate discussion around storytelling, connection and the Museum’s collection, helping stakeholders identify ideas that felt aligned, useful or worth investigating further.
Within one of the creative directions, the homepage was structured as a clear journey through the Museum’s primary content areas:
Museum introduction established the purpose and character of the institution.
What’s On surfaced current exhibitions, events, talks, workshops and programs.
Stories created pathways into thematic and archive-led content.
Kids provided a more playful entry point for activities and educational material.
Visit brought practical planning information into a prominent and accessible position.
A bold hero treatment explored the use of large-scale Museum imagery, confident typography and clear calls to action to establish an immediate sense of place. Visitors could be given a direct choice between exploring the Museum’s content and planning a physical visit.
The concept also explored a rounded sticky navigation system that would remain visible as users moved through longer pages. Its compact structure was intended to make the site easier to explore, while its softer visual treatment helped the experience feel more approachable and contemporary.
Strong blocks of brand colour, shifts in content width and varied section layouts introduced rhythm across longer pages. These transitions demonstrated how distinct content zones could be created within a consistent design system, helping users orient themselves without making each section feel repetitive.
The concepts explored how longform Museum content could be treated more like editorial storytelling than a standard institutional website article.
Large imagery, oversized headings, brand-shaped image masks and generous spacing gave important stories a stronger opening and helped text-heavy material feel more purposeful and accessible.
Comfortable line lengths, considered typography and generous whitespace supported readability, while audio, video and other media could be incorporated without disrupting the flow of the page. Subtle movement within branded image masks was proposed as a way to introduce visual life without distracting from the content.
The proposed What’s On page demonstrated how exhibitions, events, talks, workshops and online programs could be presented through a flexible content hub rather than a flat event directory.
A featured item created a clear focal point, while tabs and modular cards allowed users to browse different types of programming. Dates, categories and costs remained easy to scan, supported by strong imagery and typography.
The Kids section explored how younger audiences could be given a clear and playful pathway into the Museum while remaining connected to the broader website. Larger cards, rounded image crops and softer colour treatments created a more activity-led character without turning the section into a completely separate experience.
Our engagement provided the RBA Museum with three clearly differentiated directions to support its broader exploration of a future digital experience.
The concepts demonstrated how the website might become more immersive, visual and story-led while remaining structured, accessible and practical. They also explored the foundations of a flexible design system capable of supporting exhibitions, events, educational resources, children’s content, collection material and longform storytelling.
The consultation did not prescribe a final or adopted website solution. Instead, it gave the Museum and its stakeholders a visual and strategic framework through which to discuss possible approaches and identify ideas that could inform future decision-making.
Code and Visual acted as an early-stage creative and digital-experience consultant.
Our involvement included:
Competitive and inspirational research
Stakeholder discovery
Audience and experience framing
User-experience exploration
Creative direction
Interface concept development
Preparation of three visual directions for stakeholder review
Development of a set of full page indicative designs
Our work represented an independent contribution to the Museum’s wider exploration of its future online presence.
The consultation translated the Museum’s strategic objectives into tangible digital possibilities that could inform any subsequent redesign and development process.
For a national institution, a website is more than an information repository. It is often the first point of contact through which audiences encounter its purpose, stories and cultural value.
By combining institutional credibility with stronger storytelling, interaction and visual impact, the RBA Museum has an opportunity to make complex subjects such as money, economic history and the role of the Reserve Bank more understandable and engaging.
This project illustrated one possible vision for an online experience that could grow alongside the new Museum – inviting visitors to explore, supporting learning and presenting the Bank’s history as relevant, human and connected to everyday life.
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