TORONTO—The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto won a 2010 SEGD Jury Award from the Society of Environmental Graphic Design, based in Washington, D.C.

The Exhibits and Design Department of the Royal Ontario Museum created the look of the display, which ran from June 27, 2009 to January 3, 2010.


“Beautiful use of materials, proportions and colour to convey a message,” commented the jury. The design team contrasted an old-style typeface Hoefler Tilting with a modern font, Hoefler Text. These were paired with sans serif typeface Whitney, which was chosen for its clarity and legibility. Various type sizes and weights were used to create a hierarchy and segregate large amounts of information.

A timeline is placed over an aerial view of the desert caves where the scrolls were discovered in Qumran. (c) Robert Burley

A canvas wall and textured wallcoverings were used to reflect the sand and stone landscape where the scrolls originated. Text was silkscreened directly onto the fabrics, which were prototyped to ensure full legibility.

The monumental title wall aligns itself to the centre of the curved canvas partition that defines the main introduction. (c) Robert Burley

This project, which took 10 months to complete, was the only Canadian finalist in the international competition. Contact: www.rom.on.ca; www.segd.org