Say hello to our new logo
Corporate logos are everywhere. They are so prevalent and deceptively simple that we often don’t recognize that they are extraordinarily sophisticated little symbols that carry a disproportionate amount of communication responsibility. For good reason, logo design is an elite field of an already complex business; the brainiest of all graphic design. To quote legendary graphic designer Paul Rand:
The principal role of a logo is to identify, and simplicity is its means... Its effectiveness depends on distinctiveness, visibility, adaptability, memorability, universality, and timelessness.
That’s a tall order. It’s all about identity, and part of the process of rebuilding a museum like ours is to rebuild its identity. The logo is a key feature and becomes nearly as important as the design of the museum itself because the logo is often the first impression that people will get of it. If our sophisticated new museum has a logo that looks like it belongs on a box of breakfast cereal, we may have difficulty attracting an audience. Conversely, it is possible to have a logo that is too impressive, that promises too much. Mr. Rand speaks again:
A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around.
In the case of our logo development, many questions needed to be answered. Does it reflect our content? Is it memorable? Is it unique? Will it work alongside the Bank of Canada logo? Does it evoke our building? Can it work in multiple sizes? Does it make me look fat? OK, that last one’s pretty low on the list, but all the demands made upon this humble little design are a bit mind-boggling.
This highly adaptable design can be tilted, shifted, stretched and overlaid in many different ways and colours for any number of uses.
And here it is. What do you think? Nice, eh? We like it. It’s a very flexible design and right now our graphics team is busy adapting it to a dozen different uses and formats. We believe it will serve us a long time and now we just have to make sure our new museum will be up to our logo’s standard. No problem there.
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The Museum Blog
June 23, 2015
The Canadian financial system of today is diverse… A little known but once prolific system member was loan and building societies. These firms made loans for the construction or purchase of property against mortgages as collateral.
New Acquisitions
By: Paul S. Berry
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Blog posts
May 21, 2015
Everyone loves getting presents, and we’re no exception. We recently received a very exciting donation of 50 silver coins. The collection was purchased in Lima, Peru, at an estate sale in the 1950s.
New Acquisitions
By: Raewyn Passmore
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April 6, 2015
Our little team from the Museum stood in the education space of the Sherbrooke Nature and Science Museum on a chill November morning while the exhibition technicians assembled our finished exhibition. Yes, finished.
The Adventure of Exhibit Planning IX
By: Graham Iddon
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March 11, 2015
You could work in the exhibition-fabrication business all your life and still run into things you wouldn’t expect: a never-ending series of “uh-ohs.” It’s one of the things that makes the job so interesting and demands a high level of creative problem-solving skills…
An Exhibition Installation
By: Graham Iddon
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