New London Science Museum Logo – The Logic Behind it!!!

Jul 23, 2010 | Categories: Corporate Logos | Written By: Sam Anderson

The word “science” has been made more complex and oblique as London Science Museum unveiled its new controversial logo design. The museum has been progressively adopting fresh identities to broaden its corporate image. The new logo contains somewhat ‘hard to comprehend’ typeface and aims to communicate science as a field that requires extreme decoding.

The code style font of the logo:

This logo redesign was handled by the design firm Johnson Banks, a London based agency appointed in late 2009. Some see it as futuristic, while others just can’t make out what is written. Basically, the logo design contains the words “Science” and “Museum” in a computer code style font with the letters piled up in a stack of three. The logo designers in charge of this new identity rebrand were Michael Johnson, Kath Tudball and Miho Aishima

Idea behind the “futuristic” logo:

Creative director of Johnsons Banks, Michael Johnson, in an interview with Creative Review explained that the new identity was meant to further its appeal beyond the conventional family audience. Elaborating the design brief, he added:

"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. 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."

Regarding the motive behind using the puzzling typeface, he explained:

"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."

Your turn to speak!

After the launch of this new brand identity, the reactions of people were differing. Some thought of it as a futuristic logo, while others considered it more scientific and intricate. What do you have to say regarding this new logo? Does it really appeal from the scientific point of view?