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.