Digital Design Guidelines

These guidelines ensure brand and user experience consistency across all digital touchpoints at Auckland Museum. They cover visual design, user interface elements, and interaction patterns specific to the Museum’s digital experiences. In some cases, screen or projection-based content may need to deviate from these standards. When such exceptions arise, the project's Technology and Digital Lead should be consulted for guidance.

Typography

Gotham Narrow Book is the Auckland Museum typeface. The Gotham Narrow font family was designed and is distributed by Hoefler & Co. The Gotham Narrow font package will be provided by your Auckland Museum contact.

A screen-specific variation called "ScreenSmart" is to be used for digital projects to be provided by the Auckland Museum project team.

Minimum font size should be 16px.

Colour

For one-off experiences, the gallery or exhibition colours will be provided and should be considered, but overall colours for the digital interactive should be discussed with Auckland Museum. Any exhibition colours will be provided as a PDF package by your museum contact.

In choosing background and text colours, the Material Design Colour Tool Material Design has an accessibility feature which can be used to check contrast and text eligibility.

Typical colours are black text on a white background.

Icons

SVG icons currently in use can be found here digitalproducts/SVGs at master · AucklandMuseum/digitalproducts

If you need additional icons for a bespoke experience, please consult your Auckland Museum project lead.

Buttons

Button design is based on Tailwind utility classes and examples can be found in a Github repository. This will be provided privately if appropriate upon request to the Auckland Museum project team lead.

Interaction Design

Consistent interaction and transitions are important to create coherency and ease of use across experiences. Please follow the below conventions and discuss any further requirements with your Auckland Museum project team lead.

Image Interactions

•             Pinch to zoom in and out

•             Double tap for full zoom in and full zoom out

•             Single tap zoom in and zoom out buttons

•             Hold and drag to explore zoomed in image

•             Swipe left or right to next image/screen

Video Interactions

•             Tap screen once to show interaction bar

•             Tap volume icon to show change volume

•             Hold and drag progress bar to scrub through video

•             Click progress bar to move through video

•             Double tap screen to pause a video when playing

•             Tap screen once to show back button, tap once to go back home

Transitions between pages and for the opening and closing of pop ups and videos can be found on our Github.

User Interface Copy

Commonly used English and te reo Māori copy from our digital products

Common phrases and translations are available from the Museum's Storyblok CMS.

https://api-ap.storyblok.com/v2/cdn/spaces/3000021/datasources/211

Auckland Museum will provide an authentication token to retrieve data. This process can be facilitated by the Auckland Museum project team lead on the project.

https://www.storyblok.com/docs/api/management/core-resources/datasources/retrieve-a-single-datasource

Content

Languages

Where additional languages are required, please request designs from your Auckland Museum project team lead.

Video

Follow the below conventions when including video in a digital experience.

Function

Subtitling Guidelines

It is Auckland Museum policy to subtitle all films to support accessibility. When writing or applying subtitles for Auckland Museum audiovisual content, please follow the stylistic guidelines below.

Fonts

Title: Gotham Narrow (or exhibition font for titling only, where suitable)

Subtitle: Gotham Narrow Book, sentence case. Subtitles should be on a block to aid readability (white on black, or black on white, depending on background).

Text style and placement

• Title: Display at the start, centered, sentence case. Generally white font on black. 

• Credits/Captions: White or black, sentence case, with drop shadow if required. Located on the lower left-hand side of the screen. 

• Acknowledgements, Credits & Logos: At the end of the film, if needed. Alternatively, these may appear on an accompanying label. 

• Producer/Filmmaker Name: Display at the end of the film, before the credits. 

• Names of People in Film: Caption the first time they appear. List again at the end in order of appearance. 

• Acknowledged Contributors: Display at the end, after people featured. Format as a paragraph block. 

Translation

Speech may be translated into English when necessary. If the speech is atmospheric rather than essential for comprehension, leave it in the spoken language (transliteration into Latin alphabet is acceptable).

General subtitling guidelines

• Maximum line length: approximately 34 characters. 

• Maximum lines on screen at once: ideally one or two. 

• Break lines only when necessary, at logical points such as the end of a clause or phrase. 

• When using two lines, aim for equal length, with the top line slightly longer. 

• Verbatim transcription is preferred. Over-editing can be disrespectful to deaf or hearing-impaired viewers and confusing for lip readers.

  • Minor edits may be acceptable for particularly fast-paced sequences, where rapidly changing subtitles would be difficult to follow.

• Sound descriptions: All caps, in parentheses, e.g., (GUNFIRE ECHOES) 

• If a new speaker is not shown on screen, begin their subtitle line with a hyphen. 

• For background dialogue (not the film's main focus), use hyphens to indicate different speakers and italics to indicate secondary dialogue (refer to My Auckland Stories as an example). 

• If subtitle and caption are tightly packed, reduce the subtitle to one line to minimize clutter. 

• One-line subtitles should appear at the level of the lower line in a two-line subtitle. 

• Reading speed: Allow roughly 2 seconds per line. Adjust text length to match available time and ensure readability. Subtitles should not remain on screen after the speech ends. 

Grammar and punctuation

• Subtitles follow gallery text guidelines. 

• Use sentence case and full stops at the end of complete sentences. 

• Use macrons for te reo Māori, unless double vowels are preferred by the relevant iwi. 

• Indicate glottal stops with an opening quote mark, e.g., Hawai‘i. 

• Do not italicize Māori, Pacific, or foreign-language words, unless necessary for clarity. 

• Use an n-dash (–) with spaces to separate clauses; use a hyphen (-) to join compound words. 

• Use single quote marks (‘ ’) instead of double (“ ”).

  • For extended quoted speech across two subtitles, use:

    • First screen: opening quote mark only

    • Second screen: opening and closing quote marks

Example:

Harry said, ‘Why do you have to be so rude // ‘all the time? I’m always nice to you.’

• Use minimal commas—only when necessary for clarity. However, use the serial (Oxford) comma, e.g., Anna, Greg, and Elizabeth went to the movies. 

• Capitalize full titles before names, e.g., Auckland Museum Director David Gaimster.

  • When not using the full title, do not capitalize, e.g., The director of Auckland Museum, David Gaimster.   

• For possessives of names ending in s, use only an apostrophe, e.g., James’ car, Thomas Williams’ house. 

• Do not use apostrophes for plurals of uppercase abbreviations, e.g., CDs, 1970s. 

• Do not use full stops after initials or spaces between multiple initials. 

Credits

Review process

• For captions and credits, the filmmaker should supply Auckland Museum with a Word document of all talent names and credits, etc.

• Auckland Museum provides edited captions and credit copy to the filmmaker.

• Sub-titler produces subtitles and supplies to production company, in consultation with Auckland Museum.

• Auckland Museum review and sign off captions, credits and subtitles on film/AV/digital.

Video standards

• HD – 1920 x 1080p 50/25fps (landscape) or 1080 x 1920p (Portrait).

• Data rate: 15Mbs/sec. Codec:

  • H.264. File extension .mp4

  • Web Optimised (MP4 “Fast Start”)

• We have the ability for 60FPS but Apple ProRes is preferred for archival footage.

• 4k Video Codec:

  • 4K video must be encoded as a H.265 (HEVC) file; it cannot be encoded as H.264.

• Resolution:

  • The maximum supported resolution is 3840x2160x60p or 4096x2160x60p (For Projection only), display dependent.

• Colour Depth:

  • 4K video can be encoded at 4:2:0 subsampling with 8 bits (Main Profile) or 10 bits (Main 10 Profile) of depth.

• Container Format:

  • The following container formats are supported: .ts, .mov, .mp4, .mkv, .webm.

  • Note: BrightSign players support .webm video with Vorbis audio only.

  • The Opus audio codec is not supported.

• Bitrate:

  • For 4K videos, we recommend a constant bit rate (CBR) between 30 and 40 Mbps.

  • Note that the second video decoder can simultaneously support a 1080p video at up to 40 Mbps.

• Audio Support:

  • AAC audio (CBR/VBR) up to 288Kbps

• Up scaling not to be performed unless specified

• Subtitle file format as .SRT, STL or VTT depending on the media placement

Audio

Audio within product and one-off digital experiences should adhere to the below conventions. Audio guides are hosted in the STQRY CMS and are primarily updated and populated by the Auckland Museum team with support from STQRY.

Audio in digital interactives

• Ensure you are using the correct icons. (See Icons and Buttons section above)

• User should not be able to mute audio, the bottom setting of the slider should be low but still audible.

• Consider whether a prompt for the user to put on headphones should be included within the digital experience - this can be covered in visitor market research testing if required.

Audio technical standards

• Audio Peak Levels:

  • Peak audio levels may not rise above -2 dBTP (-2 dbFS) at any point.

• Audio loudness:

  • The audio loudness of a clip will be -24 LKFS.

• Levels and Loudness are to be measured using a loudness meter that is compliant with ITU-R BS.1770-2 or 1770-3.

• AAC audio in H.264 Video (CBR only;no VBR support)

• MP3 audio files as stereo or mono at a 48 kHz or 44 kHz sampling rate (MPEG1/MPE2 Video)

• WAV audio files as stereo or mono (32-bit/96kHz output is supported on all models except the HDx20, HDx10, and AU320)

• Dolby Digital (AC3) 5.1 audio in an MPEG2 or MOV video.