The Rochester Museum and Science Center is Rochester’s oldest and largest science museum. Founded in 1912, the RMSC houses exhibits in various sciences as well as a Planetarium. The client was interested in a branding refresh to increase attendance from members and visitors.
As a part of the process to re-invent the brand, I proposed changing the name of the museum to emphasize its new identity and to better cater the museum to the target audience of families with young children. The final name became Science Discovery Center, which highlights science instead of location and the museum. Adding discovery was a way to appeal to families by making learning fun and exciting.
I created this style board to use as a reference while developing the main branding, and other components later in the project. In an attempt to make the logo less literal (like the current logo), I drew together similarities of different areas of science. Creating the style board revealed visual similarities in fields such as astronomy, atomic structures, molecular diagrams, and circuitry.
Drawing from the simple usage of shape and line in the style board images, I created many sketches to flesh out a direction to take on the logo mark. In the design process, I strived to make a mark that would be timeless and easily recognizable. These pages show a sampling of the sketches created before I arrived at the final design.
In the final phase of developing the logo, I worked on a system of icons relating to the diverse science topics in the museum. Using the same process as the logo development, I arrived at the system of icons below that use the same visual language of simple shapes and lines. Broken into three categories, the icons put the museum’s diverse collections into an organized system.
These website mock-ups were created to utilize the new branding and illustrate an improved navigation. The Collections page displays the icons and defines what each section is so families can plan out what they want to see when they visit the museum.
This mobile app concept acts as a guide for visitors to find their way through the museum. By selecting a collection and a specific exhibit, the user can learn more about the exhibit along with its location in the building.
