Launched to coincide with our Illuminating India season of exhibitions and events, this new visual identity was developed by award-winning design company North. It aims to bring a visual cohesion to the five the museums that make up the Science Museum Group.
So why the change?
We are the world’s leading group of science museums and our teams in Bradford, London, Manchester, Shildon and York are working more closely than ever together, sharing programming and treating the objects we hold as a single collection.
But, as our Deputy Director Jonathan Newby, puts it, “our existing, disparate brands do nothing to celebrate our shared values.”
Nowhere is our growing cohesion better expressed than in the UK tour of Tim Peake’s Soyuz, presented by Samsung, that will see the spacecraft spending at least two months at each of our museums.
What North’s expertise has helped us do is to articulate our shared purpose, through a new mission to inspire futures, with an aim to ignite curiosity among people of all ages and backgrounds.
Our mission inspired the idea of illumination as a central feature of the new identity, explored both through the gradated font weight in the new logos and the use of vibrant colour gradients elsewhere within the graphic language.
“North have created a confident and elegant visual identity”, adds Jonathan Newby “that proudly projects our unity yet will allow each museum to continue to express its different focus as the identity is rolled out at all sites”.
The new look is being adopted for physical and digital visitors to the Science Museum, breathing fresh dynamism into a visit to the museum.
In tandem with North’s design work, leading web agency Numiko has developed our new web ecosystem for our Group that adopts the new identity and introduces a common architecture that will help visitors to make the most of their museum visit, support research into our astonishingly diverse collection and provide resources for educators and learners.
The brand was first deployed in Bradford as part of the relaunch of the National Science and Media Museum and, over the next 12 months, the identity will be rolled out across the other museums in the group; the Museum of Science of Industry in Manchester, the National Railway Museum in York and Locomotion in County Durham.
“In developing the new identity, we drew on the innovation and inspiration that personifies the work both of the Science Museum and the wider group” says Sean Perkins, Founding Partner of North. “Just as the museums explore the ingenuity behind scientific advance, so we set out to create a brand that was both beautiful and innovative.”
Striking new imagery celebrates the intricate beauty of objects within our collection.
We love the new identity and hope you do too.
