Branding Science: Making Information Visual

At the intersection of graphic design and science, branding arrives to play a critical role in communicating complex, abstract and very, very important ideas. For designers, this offers an exciting challenge: how to represent scientific concepts through logos and visual identities. Historically, science relied on symbols of authority (like a wax seal) to lend credibility, like the seal of the University of Heidelberg example in the full article. In an intriguing contrast, modern science institutions often use minimalist, abstract visuals to symbolize scientific principles, like Los Alamos Laboratory’s very midcentury modern, atomic-age-design logo. But no matter how complicated or simple, these examples demonstrate how branding can make science accessible and engaging, and lot more fun…for graphic designers, anyway!