The Ontario Science Centre corporate identity has to be considered one of, if not THE best logos in Canadian design history. It was created in the latter half of the 1960s by legendary Canadian designer Allan Fleming. Simple, clean and incredibly smart, the logo is timeless in its idea as well as execution. It says ‘science’ without being boring and communicates “Ontario’ without being bureaucratic. In 2004 Bruce Mau Design in Toronto was asked by the centre to refresh the logo. Thankfully, Mau and his team were able to recognize the genius of the original mark and only changed the wordmark, leaving the symbol in it’s original form. Hopefully the logo will be around for another 40 years. – Dave Watson Click to see the current version.
Comments
BlueMay 1, 2009
It would be nice to see all the versions of this, past and present. If you have both, the comparison would be helpful.
John RyanMay 1, 2009
Love the logo, hate the wordmark. This is the original wordmark (or, at least, the wordmark before BMD changed it).
Stacking words in this manner always leads to issues with the alignment of the first letters of each line, and in a wordmark where two of the three words begin with circular letterforms, the issue is exacerbated.
The BMD version can be seen on the current OSC website.
<http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/>
Looks like they beefed up the ‘Science’ to provide visual emphasis, while also (potentially) avoiding misalignment of letters from line to line.
I’m fairly certain the original is Gil Sans, while the BMD version uses Linotype’s Textra Bold SC… I think.
[You can see Textra here](http://www.linotype.com/50036/linotypetextraboldsc-font.html)
jobMay 1, 2009
Why would they even bother going through a redesign? The original is amazing, and the redo barely got into it. I agree with the other posts, glad that Mau had the sensibility to keep the logo and unhappy with the type tweeks that were made.
This reminds me of the provincial logo redo, what a barf fest and in the end a legendary logo got shelved,
I am curious about how these decisions even get made…can you image Coke of Nike going into a board room, and to appear busy and progressive, suggesting that the old logo need to be retired.
Canada needs to build, and celebrate, its design heritage not demo it!
John RyanMay 1, 2009
I prefer the revised wordmark. the original’s:
O
S
C
kind of drives me bonkers.
DaveMay 1, 2009
i agree. The new typesetting works better. I wonder if they tried using Gill at all for the new one…and just made it better
SamDecember 11, 2011
I think this is one of the ugliest logos in Canada today.