Established as a free library in 1824, the Brooklyn Museum is this year celebrating its bicentennial with a new identity created by Other Means. The designers took advantage of a useful coincidence: there are double O’s in the name “Brooklyn,” as well as double zeroes in 200 years and in museum’s street address, 200 Eastern Parkway. All the O’s and zeroes brought to mind the repeated dots on the building’s façade.
From the museum’s website: “Two dots, inspired by those that frame the names of ancient philosophers, playwrights, and poets across the building’s facade, now bookend the logo and text throughout the Museum. This reference to writers and thinkers links to our beginnings as a library and to the intersectional nature of the arts.
“In every application, the dots appear at least twice—an echo of the two O’s in Brooklyn. They can be activated in motion graphics, used as bullets in text or as functional features in signs, and occasionally replaced with symbols or illustrations to add meaning or a sense of play. In addition, we now intertwine the double O’s in Brooklyn and merge the M’s and U’s in Museum.”