London’s Science Museum launches new logo by North Design to a controversial response

London’s Science Museum has unveiled its new logo by North Design. Typographically led, the redesign adopts a full cap logo in a sans-serif font decreasing in thickness as the letters are spelled out across a changing gradient background of pink and purple. The identity launched on the Science Museum’s Twitter earlier this week in a short animation.

The institution was “proud” to reveal its new identity, though North has not made any official announcement about its new work, despite being implicated on the Science Museum website and social media channels already. The studio has previously worked on the branding for cultural institutions the Tate and Southbank.

The rebrand has caused some controversy, most notably the reaction of the museum’s previous identity designers, Johnson Banks.

Johnson Banks’ identity for the Science Museum launched in 2010, winning a D&AD award in 2011 and was a firm favourite with design audiences and the general public. Seven years seems a fair amount of time to wait before having an identity redesign, but Johnson Banks was quick to add a remark on Twitter stating: “Well we knew this was coming. But, still, a bit of a clunker from the @sciencemuseum? #dodgykerningmethinks #notbitter”. In contrast with that statement, the design studio has since retweeted a series of negative responses to the Science Museum’s identity.

North Design is yet to comment on the new work and the consequential discussion around the Science Museum identity.