Project Brief: Museum Logo
Corporate Identity, Fall 2018
Read:
Whitney Logo Redesign
The Whitney Identity: Responding to W(hat)?
Respond:
1. What was your initial reaction to the Whitney identity system after reading the first article?
2. In your own words, describe what responsive design is. What are the pros and cons of applying responsive design to an identity system?
3. The new Whitney identity has been criticized as boring and duplicitous due its simplistic, open-ended design. Do you agree or disagree — why? Are boring and simple one in the same?
PROJECT
Research the museums below and choose one to create a logo signature (brandmark, logotype and tagline) for:
The Mutter Museum
Museum of Death
Bicycle Heaven
International UFO Museum & Research Center
The Museum of Quackery
Devil’s Rope Museum
Museum of Jurassic Technology
Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)
Circus World Museum
Liberace Museum
Sing Sing Prison Museum
Glore Psychiatric Museum
Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum
The Voodoo Museum
International Spy Museum
Museum of Sex
Bigfoot Discovery Museum
National Museum of Funeral History
Museum of the Weird
The Museum
The National Museum of Roller Skating
International Banana Museum
Museum of Transportation
Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum
Burlesque Hall of Fame
RESEARCH
Go to the website and make notes on what your museum embodies. Gather visual reference: existing imagery, photographs, etc. Search for museum reviews or articles and include those in your process as well!
Create a visual idea board for the museum that will inform your logo development.This can be organized in a separate file and uploaded to Medium, or you can post images/links, thoughts, etc. directly to your Medium process (more efficient!).
Include the following:
• Pertinent business information: existing identity/branding system, location, contact info, any tag lines, mottos, sub titles, secondary names, etc.
• Business history, mission statement
• Summaries/reviews of recent exhibitions, articles, visitor reviews
• Images of interior/exterior, any other existing imagery you
can find
• Existing Design as Inspiration
• Illustration/Photography reference
*The more research and visuals you have the better!
Brainstorm: Make a mindmap and/or create lists of everything you associate with the museum that can inform your initial logo sketches
Logo Exploration
Work out a lot of different logo ideas in thumbnails.:
- Sketch at least 5 ideas for each of the following seven categories:
Wordmarks
Letterforms
Emblems
Abstract Marks
Pictorial Marks
Dynamic Marks
Characters
TIPS FOR GENERATING LOGO THUMBNAILS
•The more material you set down initially the more
options you have to explore.
•Work in an unconfined pictorial space — do not start
by working in a square or rectangular field.
•Do not start by working on the computer!
•Work with line and shape only. Continuous tone is not
permitted. If you want to create a sense of light and
volume do so by using hatching, cross-hatching,
stippling, etc.
- Remember that logos are seen in many different ways — very small (on stationery) and very large (on signage). The style you use to create the images should work well on any scale. The sort of subtle detail you might use in an illustration will not always work in a logo. SIMPLIFY!
Due 8/31 (Medium, 9am): research/visuals/midmapping/idea board
Due 9/5 (In class): research/visuals/midmapping and 50 logo sketches
