Established in 1965, The Museum of Flight is a private non-profit air and space museum located in Tukwila, a city south of Seattle, Washington. Attracting over 500,000 visitors per year, it holds the largest air and space collection in the world. Housed in and around a modern campus that provides over 15 acres of exhibit space, the museum hosts a variety of permanent and interactive exhibits, educational programs (one of which is the largest K-12 program in the world; serving 140,000 students yearly), simulations, a 132-seat Wings Cafe and much more.
I introduce to you a new identity for the Museum of Flight. The new brand brings about a purposeful change; a new image that was once hid the magnitude of the museum is now courageous, light and sharp.
It all begins with the logo where the circle shape historically references wholesomeness; the circular word mark represents the all-encompassing collection of air and space craft. Like our atmosphere where our world’s most pivotal technology resides, the museum's color is blue. Blue also embodies openness & space. The slice down the middle of the logo represents the angle in which a plane takes off from land. The upper right circle represents the moon and sun, which is always present during flight.
After doing thorough research on the history of flight, the museum itself and aerodynamics, I brainstormed a list of keywords. From there, I began sketching out what those words looked like visually. This is how I came up with the idea for a series of lines to sweep fluidly across all platforms as a supporting element.
Majestic | Modern | Direction | Air | Glide | Moving | Ascent | Open | Motion | Blue | Release | Valiant | Aspire | Altitude | Future | Quiet | Free | Soar
There was a lack of excitement after observing what pre-existed for museum labels. To take these labels further beyond the traditional text-only description, a digital experience is created in which viewers could touch and interact with the artifacts, air and spacecraft in digital form. The museum is also starting to run out of exhibition space. By transferring photos of the physical artifacts onto the digital platform, we can eliminate that space and allow more important artifacts (like air and spacecraft) to fit.
In an earlier iteration, there was a vertical split down the center, but realized most photos of air and spacecraft spanned horizontally. So, I adapted the screen to better fit a horizontal image. After some user testing, it was evident that limiting the amount of buttons the user had helped avoid overwhelming feelings and confusion. It was also unappealing to have too much text shown at a time, users often glanced over it. Hiding the body copy by adding a “+ more info button”, for those who wanted to learn more, was the better solution.
The new identity has a combination of type, color and supporting illustrations that bring a lot of flexibility to the system while keeping everything cohesive. The underlying grid is simple but effective and the use of the typeface DIN allows a lot of type to fit in small spaces. I think this gives an exciting, futuristic, and modern personality to the museum and it will stand out among the rest of the safer and less risk-taking history museums in the world.
Thank you.
