Logotastic

Johnson Banks has recently renovated the well known and loved Science museum’s brand identity in order for the museum to appeal to a wider audience. The studio was put to work on redesigning the museums identity towards the end of 2009 and the result has provoked some very positive arguments stating that the logo is far from dead

Lynda Relph – Knight argues in her column in ‘design week’ that the museums new logo counters any theory that the logo is dead. ‘The square device, with its grid typeface, dominates communications, while creating a framework for imagery and text, rather than the other way round.’

The new brand identity is hoping to draw in older audiences as well as younger ones, by changing the logo it’s possible to really achieve a new look and feel for the museum, providing a strong argument that the logo still holds a strong presence in creating a brands identity. The logo is going to appear prominently across promotions including banners, signs and publications. The brief Johnson received from the museum was as follows

“The museum briefed us to search for a more sophisticated visual identity, to avoid the usual science clichés of test tubes and mad, white-lab-coated professors, whilst supplying more cut-though,” he explains. “We were also keen to find a visual style that was much more than just a logo and could plant the museum back in the minds of audiences who might have forgotten them. After experimenting with several routes, the chosen idea stemmed from research we did on codes, puzzles, patterns and basic digital typefaces, and we found a way to shorten the word science so we could create a grid-like ‘stack’ of the letterforms. We also began to experiment with slightly abstracted letterforms as we noticed that ‘science’ and ‘museum’ were relatively generic words.”

Of course we at Logotastic will argue that the logo is not dead, far from it…..but does the new logo for the science museum prove that? What do you think?…..