Carnegie Museum of Natural History

One of the Four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

dippy

by

Visitors Develop New Logo

new logo for Carnegie Museum of Natural History featuring a dinosaur

by Kathleen Bodenlos 

In 2016 we asked our visitors to help us develop a new logo
for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Our loyal visitors and members
attended multiple focus groups spanning the better part of a year. In the end,
they came to a decision— 99% of them in fact! They summed it up in just one
word—“Dippy!”

It certainly makes sense. Diplodocus carnegii has a long history with Carnegie Museum of
Natural History spanning back to 1907. He was the first dinosaur in Dinosaur
Hall. Our life-sized Dippy statue outside proudly sports an impressive wardrobe of scarves. He
won our friendly Clash of the Carnegies competition as the most beloved museum object and
always gets lots of “likes” on Facebook. From a marketing standpoint, we love
it because dinosaurs are our big differentiator from the other great cultural
institutions in our city.

Capturing the right look and feel took a little work.
Several talented designers and artists worked on multiple iterations of the
logo and even our paleontologist, Dr. Matt Lamanna, made changes to make our
final design more accurate. In the end, we were all very pleased with new logo
and hope you like it as well.

We invite you to help us celebrate Dippy. Please take a pic
with Dippy, inside or outside the museum, and upload it with the #newdippylogo.

As they said in France when this dinosaur premiered in the
National Museum of Natural History of Paris, “Vive le Dippy!”

Kathleen Bodenlos is the Director of Marketing at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are invited to blog about their unique museum experiences.

by

Dippy Makes an Impression

child's clay dinosaur

By Laurie Giarratani

Recently I had dinner with friends, one of whom recently visited Carnegie Museum of Natural History on a school field trip. After dinner Mira Conti, age 5, showed me a project that she completed as homework after her visit. The task: to create a three dimensional dinosaur based on what she learned at the museum.

Mira chose Dippy as her model, shown above. Three things delight me about this creation:

1) It features a plant! In Mira’s mini diorama, Dippy gracefully grazes on a leafy tree top, showing that dinosaurs were part of a complex ecosystem and evolved alongside diverse plant life.

2) Dippy’s tail extends in a powerful arc, held high off the ground. Form and function are key evolutionary concepts that we strive to make accessible to every age level through the museum’s education programs. It’s nice to see how one such detail sticks in a young mind.

3) We welcome over 25,000 school children annually on field trips, and every day we are astounded by their joy, curiosity, and the unpredictable ways that they connect their existing knowledge to new discoveries at the museum. Very rarely do we get a window into what aspects of their museum experience resonate with them later at home, at school, and in their communities.

I’d like to thank Mira for showing me her project, and thank her teachers at Sacred Heart Elementary School for taking the time and effort to plan their field trip along with such a creative homework assignment. I hope to see you all again at the museum soon!

Laurie Giarratani works in the Education department at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.