The Consortium for Interacting Minds at Dartmouth gathers several research labs studying human interaction at the brain level. The Consortium’s mission is to better understand how minds interact.
In 2021 they approached me with a challenge: how to make their complex research accessible and engaging? Together we created a visual identity with 2 goals in mind: giving researchers tools to better communicate and creating a unified voice for all the Consortium’s labs.
Client
Consortium for Interacting Minds, Dartmouth (2022)
Project type
Visual identity
Website design
Website development
The Consortium’s logo is based on the idea of the mind as an abstraction of the brain. The brain is graphically abstracted with two symetrical lines creating a minimal and recognizable icon. The logo’s organic design also suggests the shape of a flower, symbolizing our brains flourishing through human interactions.
The icon is designed to be recognizable and readable at all sizes, from very large to quite small. The wordmark is set in General Sans, a friendly geometric sans serif font that matches the icon’s curves and weight. The logo with the wordmark is designed in black and white for an optimal sharpness, especially at small sizes.
The bright and contemporary color palette is built around yellow as the main accent color. Yellow helps to focus on the important parts of the story, it highlights the key messages and brightens the overall identity. It is balanced with a very soft dark blue that brings calm and seriousness to the identity.
With round letters and a friendly look, General Sans - a font designed by Frode Helland for the Indian Type Foundry - is used for titles and short text. As a secondary font, Inter - a font designed by Rasmus Andersson - is used for longer paragraphs thanks to its high readability and contemporary design.
The visual identity takes full shape on the Consortium’s website where the logo, the color palette, fonts and illustrations dialogue together. They give the Consortium a powerful and clear voice to tell its important stories.
