The Natural History Museum has rebranded, overhauling its logo, digital platforms and onsite visual identity to better engage audiences.
The charity, which will mark its 150th anniversary in 2031, has also launched a strategy focused on delivering a future in which both people and the planet thrive, and said the rebrand would match its ambitions.
A spokesperson for the charity told Third Sector it also needed to develop a logo that could be trademarked and protected internationally to safeguard the charity’s intellectual property.
Richard Orr, head of marketing at the museum, said in a statement: “With a bolder and more contemporary voice, the new brand positioning can better engage both existing and new audiences and help us highlight how the museum is finding solutions to the urgent issues that face our planet.”
The charity’s black and white, text-heavy logo is being replaced by a pink, red and black one depicting circular patterns and a “word ring” of the initials NHM. It will appear in a marketing campaign for the museum later this month.
The charity declined to say how much it had spent on the rebranding project, saying this was “commercially sensitive information”.
The Natural History Museum, which is a science research centre as well as being the most-visited indoor attraction in the UK, worked on the rebrand with the creative agencies Heavenly, Pentagram and Nomad. About 270 other creative agencies are understood to have pitched for the project.
“Following an initial open ‘expression of interest’ we arrived at a shortlist, from which Pentagram’s submission was selected as the one that best met our requirements,” the charity said in a statement.
Commenting on the process on LinkedIn, Stuart Lang, owner of creative agency We Launch, estimated that the two-year project likely had a six- to nine-month pitching process.
“270 agencies?!? Just imagine this instead > those 268 losing agencies could’ve each spent 1-2 weeks helping 268 brands in need. Making each more relevant. Using creativity to overcome vital business challenges they were all facing in Covid times. Helping them gain more sales. Potentially saving jobs,” he wrote.
“Everyone would love to rebrand an institution like the Natural History Museum – but only a tiny number of agencies (those with buckets of work for similar cultural institutions) will get through the procurement stage. Most don’t realise this though, so they spend SO much time going through the process.”
The charity declined to say how long the shortlisting process had taken.