The Biological Interdisciplinary Open Maker Environment, or BIOME for short, is a student group at Stanford that is an open space for anyone to do bioengineering and biology inspired projects.
When designing the BIOME logo, I wanted to make something that reflects the overall mission of the group. I started by mapping out all the words and ideas associated with BIOME.
Below are some early prototypes drawn on paper. I wanted the logo to evoke themes of both biology and engineering/technology, especially the do-it-yourself ethic.
This was the first iteration of the BIOME logo. I aimed to create something that represented both biology and engineering / technology. Using the color green to connect with ideas of life and growth carried on into later designs. Overall, I wanted BIOME’s imagery to be more sleek and modern and this design felt too complicated to be used as a logo.
Playing with the idea of modular imagery such as hexagonal units fitting together, I made a logo that conveyed the idea of putting together many parts of a whole. I liked the concept of bioengineering being a process of building, but in the end, this logo was not cohesive enough and the different units looked too disconnected.
Below is the final logo design. It is an abstract rendition of a DNA double helix, with the name BIOME written into it. I wanted it to be a play off the idea of making bioengineering into our every day lives, or “integrating biohacking into the DNA of the world.” It has been pointed out to me that the logo is also reminiscent of a chromosome, which is also fitting.
