Brand Awareness

For my brand awareness assignment, I chose to first take a closer look at the logo and brand of the American Museum of Natural History: http://www.amnh.org.

I chose the AMNH logo because I think it speaks to a simplicity, while suggesting what may lie behind the image. The font is a clean sans serif, with the “of” turned sideways to keep your eye from glossing over the wordiness. The font also blends the clean and modern with a curved and subtle organic nature to better blend with the image to the left. The image of the man in the circle represents their mission: an open ended image of a figure with an outstretched arm reaching for something, all within a circle. To me, the image hints at the search for knowledge, but one could find their own meaning in the image. I was unable to find a backstory on how and why this logo was chosen, but would be really curious to see what the original inspiration and process was. Both online and in print, this logo is used with or without the words, sometimes in blue rather than black, so it has some variations depending on the circumstances.

 

The second logo I chose was that of the Anchorage Museum: https://www.anchoragemuseum.org.

Again, we see a clean, clear, sans serif font that I think represents the modernity of the brand. The color is calming and modern blue, with pale slate gray and dotted sections that all intersect to form the “A” and “M.” They underwent a brand upheaval about a year ago to better represent the museum’s place in the modern world, and to help usher in a new era of the museum with a new executive director and an updated mission statement. I noticed that the logo has some variations, with different colors and patterns used, and that more of these were used in print, while the original was used more frequently online, perhaps to help establish the logo and brand more solidly with non-locals.

 

The third logo I chose was for a brand image created by the National Endowment for the Arts: https://www.arts.gov.

First of all, this is my favorite branding thus far in this assignment. The font is bold, easily seen and read from a distance, and is put in black to better work with the primary colors of the triangles above it The triangles are a form of font here, echoing the shapes produced by the letters “A” and “W.” The image helps reinforce the message that art does indeed work. The designer showed that with the most basic of tools, shapes, colors, and placement, you can convey this powerful message. One drawback is that this logo’s grayscale version, though less often used, seriously lacks the punch of the original tricolor version.