British Museum to unveil a new brand alongside the building upgrades
The British Museum is looking for a new brand identity to go with its soon to be revamped building.
At the moment, the museum’s brand is a simple but elegant typeface for its name. If anything, the museum’s website plays down who it is in favour of what it does, which is no bad thing, but it risks being a tad too introverted in its approach if visited by someone not familiar with the museum.
As part of the museum’s project to revamp its buildings, they’re also looking at refreshing the brand identity.
The current design dates from 2012, and was just a subtle update of their previous design — keeping the logo the same and just “poshing up” the typeface.
Changing a brand identity can be challenging, especially if a dramatic change is proposed. This can be disconcerting to existing visitors and maybe even controversial if an attempt at whimsy fails. The London Museum’s choice of a pigeon divided opinions, and the London Transport Museum’s recent logo change seemed to confuse people.
A logo can be simple and clean or try to convey a message, which is then lost in time. Only when I was reading up some old information did your correspondent find out that the former Museum of London’s three blobs logo represented its three key departments. It was too abstract to be recognisable.
The British Museum is currently in an unusual position in that it almost doesn’t have a brand identity — it simply is THE MUSEUM, but times change, and with vastly more ways of sharing information on social media and video, having a stronger brand identity is now seen as critical. What’s the point of a viral video if the venue can’t be easily identified by the logos in the background?
Phase one of the project, to research how people understand the museum, is underway, and now they’re seeking an agency to work on the rebranding exercise itself.
The tender document says that the museum’s new identity should “comprise a clear system that conveys the brand idea and narrative in such a way that it can be used and applied consistently to internal and external products and services, across our many audiences, locally, nationally, and globally.”
The tender for the design contract will close next month, with an expectation that the new brand could be approved by the end of this year.
That suggests it might be launched early next year, with new staff uniforms, a website revamp, and, of course, all the souvenirs to be sold in the museum’s shops.
If someone is not familiar with what is in the British Museum they are unlikely to be a visitor to the British Museum. It’s like worrying about whether people think the Vatican Museums are full of vats and cans.
A lot of people visit large museums when visiting cities because it’s on the top of the list of recomended things to do and just turn up when the tour guide says to be there — it wouldn’t be hugely surprising if a foreign tourist was taken to, for example, the V&A museum without fully understanding its history or collection.
Presumably this revamp is being carried out alongside, or in response to, a reimagining of the ethos of the institution itself, starting with its name. What does ‘the British Museum’ imply in 2025? In the past it was clearly a celebration of Britain’s power and global reach – hence its acquisition of the Parthenon Sculptures and other significant artifacts from other cultures, often in highly dubious circumstances. Now, with a distinct possibility of the return of many of those objects to their countries of origin (quite rightly), now is perhaps a good time for the British Museum to better tell the story of how Britain became what it once was – a pre-eminent colonial power – and what it is now (or is transitioning into) in a post- or neo-colonial era.
‘often’? A tiny handful of objects in the BM have disputed origins. The BM website has a list of all objects whose acquisition is contested by any parties. But 99.9% of the objects in its collection are not disputed by anyone and are not ‘dubious’ in any sense.
Not everyone wants their objects back
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/01/museum-keeps-skulls-after-papua-new-guinea-rejects-offer/
A VERY tint percentage of the Museum’s collection were obtained in anything like “highly dubious circumstances” – and even those are open to dispute. However you argue that Elgin acquired the Parthenon Sculptures these were bought from him quite legally!
You also misunderstand the BRITISH part of the Museum’s name – it doesn’t refer to being a Museum OF Britain but was in contrast to the numerous local museums in that this was to be a Museum FOR Britain not OF Britain.
The Museum of London (when that is what it was called) put its previous logo, Dick Whittington and his cat, everywhere incuding the stairs at the Aldersgate roundabout near Pret up to the wakway – still there, in the tiling, last time I looked. Goodness knows what anyone not familar with that history will think if they see that now. And so it goes.
What international visitors think of the BM’s name is probably not much, as I wrote here: https://www.chrismrogers.net/post/what-s-british-about-the-british-museum But it doesn’t stop them coming.