Logo Design

Letterform

Commissioned to design the Lifelong Kindergarten logo, I offered several different directions to the client, a professor at the MIT Media Lab who was starting his new research group. The simplicity of the final design evokes the group's orientation to children of the future. The shapes are reminiscent of the manipulatives used with kindergarteners for centuries, yet the dimension of the yellow sphere updates this symbol. The transparency of the sphere also indicates the group's notion that the objects we use should not be opaque and out of reach of a person's understanding, but that one should be able to build and know at a root level. Lastly, the shapes overlap to create the "L" and "K" of the group's name.

Symbolic

The Digital Nations logo, used by a colloquium at the MIT Media Lab, needed to communicate to a multilingual audience, and had to contain symbols free of English. Instead it uses the 1s and 0s of binary code to form this active image: it could be an assembly or discussion circle, a rotating gear, or a sun (the universal symbol that it is). These multiple readings are appropriate for a group which used technology in many different settings internationally to buttress educational and economic opportunities.

Fun and Goofy

The Making & Tinkering Affinity Group is a consortium of informal educators within ASTC (a professional museum organization). This identity reflects their fun-loving approach to playful learning. The optical illusion at this logo's core, based on the classic impossible trident, reflects the group's ability to achieve the unachievable within educational settings.

Pattern Play

This snowflake, composed entirely of the tool icons used by Maker Media as a set of secondary identity graphics, was used in the Make: Pop-Up Store

Mission Patches

A new professor's colleagues approached me to design a set of mission patches, a la those worn by NASA astronauts, to represent the wonderful new energy he brought to his lab. These included his identities as "George Soros' henchman", "Chief Effervescence Officer", activist for justice for Trayvon Martin, inventor of the pop-up ad, and progenitor of the Cute Cat Theory.

Logo Use Guidelines

The School Maker Faire program needed to have a self-service identity system that each sponsoring institution could use in an open-and-go fashion, or adapt to their needs. I developed a suite of templates and guidelines for fair use of the logo and templates for schools to adapt.