Ornithology
Fictional museum based around birds.
Prompt
As someone who likes birds, I wanted to make a fictional museum based around the subject. This museum's target audience was mainly centered around bird watchers, bird enthusiasts, and adults. For my overall concept, I wanted to explore the plethora of environments and habitats that birds can inhabit, their life cycles, the relation between Darwinism and Finches, and the cultural meanings behind certain birds to name a few fields. Given the amount of variety that surrounds birds, I figured that the museum could go really in depth.
Images from various sources.
Research
In order to get a full picture of what to look for in the design, I looked through many different examples of birds and modern logo designs to get a feel of what the branding should look like. For the birds, looking at the differences and similarities was key in figuring out how the best possible logo could be made that showcases what most people think of as a bird. For the logos, I first looked at various ways people have rendered birds as graphic reductions and then moved on to general modern designs to try and find a suitable middle ground between the two.
Screenshots used for reference. Images from various sources.
Initial Designs
Making the logo first was essential, so I threw together a lot of different iterations in order to get a good idea of what I wanted to narrow it down to. For the poster art, I looked at different ways to render the bird: realistic/silhouette, graphic rendering, or cartoonish. Eventually I went with the realistic/silhouette one, leading me to make the digital advertisements based on the poster art. Since the place I'm designing is also a museum, I wanted to make a pamphlet that would showcase some important information and how to contact various branches of the museum.
Final Designs
The final designs came about from finding a nice in-between of all the various design styles that I was trying to use. For the poster, I filled it out more so that it didn't look very static and more like a real marsh; the logo ended up getting the name put with it instead of being just a logo; the digital ads were graphically reduced to just two colors, as the full poster art felt too busy for such a small screen; and the brochure had some graphic elements shifted, new pages that showcased some birds that were on display, and just generally cleaning up the design.
