The project
Opus Design of Boston was asked to design a logo for the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. Casey McGee, Sr Graphic Designer and Graphic Illustrator, took the lead on the project. Their previous logo was text only, the client was hoping for a mark and type combination.
The client
MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design works in India and other developing countries to address and solve societal challenges. They take on a broad number of projects relating to: housing, health, education, energy, water and agriculture. The Tata Center supports researchers, both student and faculty, to go beyond the lab and make an impact.
Design challenge and approach
When Opus starts a logo project it’s important to learn about the client. We do a brand questionnaire to get a better idea of who the client is and how they want to be perceived. A part of this questionnaire is to take a page of adjectives and underline the ones you want to be associated with and cross out the ones you do not want to be associated with. We also ask some preferences question: dark vs. light or soft vs. hard. This exercise helps us to deliver a logo that best represents the client’s brand attributes and aspirations..
They also shared the concepts they wanted for the logo: large scale, big impact, people collaborating, technology and working from outside in or inside out. After listening to our client we brought them several design options and discussed the strategy behind each. Below you will see the final logo that Tata chose.
Folks from the Tata Center liked the bright colors that speak to India, the color overlay to represent collaboration and the moving in and out showing the impact that Tata is having. Casey enjoys working with clients to get just the right logo. It’s the thing people are going to see first, it can seem like such a small thing, but really it is a cornerstone of who they are. She likes the challenge of designing a logo to match the client. Here she did just that, a perfect match.
