Our first blogpost on our new website here at Ely Museum, is all about something you will see before you even step foot in our newly redeveloped museum – our new branding!
From signs outside the museum to our new website – we hope you love our new logo & branding as much as we do!
Whilst many of you may remember our purple lettering, rounded font and simple eel gleeve logo, our National Lottery Heritage Fund redevelopment was the perfect time to refresh these things & ensure they were reflective of the new Ely Museum. Ely Museum tells the story of the landscape of our region and how it has been shaped by people, so we wanted our logo to reflect this landscape and what makes it unique. From rich farming land and the straight river to the Cathedral in the background, we wanted to make sure we also represented the ¾ sky which the Fens are famous for too.
Our new logo
When we closed our doors to the public in September 2019, Ely Museum’s transformation began. Whilst the builders were onsite knocking down walls and building new extensions, staff and trustees at the museum met with our branding consultants, the Cambridge based firm Igentics, to discuss what we thought our new logo might look like & what we wanted it to reflect.
The staff & trustees all brought along logos they liked from other organisations & brainstormed what ‘devices’ or images we would include within ours. It quickly became apparent that although we all loved the simple logos of many other organisations, we needed something more detailed for Ely Museum.
Towards the end of 2019, several logo and font options were prepared for us & we spent several weeks whittling down the choices until we had a final selection for the logo and for the font. The logo was quite different to what many of us thought we would choose just a few months before hand, but having seen various mock-up logos throughout the selection process, all agreed that a traditional wood-cut logo was best.
We then moved onto colour selection & settled on a beautiful navy and copper to match our new copper window and roof. We then also selected a range of secondary colours which we will use for things like exhibition posters, leaflets and flyers
Igentics Creative Director Paul Avory then commissioned local artist, Andrew English to recreate his sketched roundel and turn it into a woodblock using a traditional techniques before running off prints of our new logo. Traditional skills and techniques are part of our heritage and we wanted to reflect that.
Find out more about Igentics on their website:
www.igentics.com
Alongside using our new logo throughout the building and on our new marketing materials, we have also used it to create a new bespoke range of items for our gift shop featuring the new logo
