Theme
The first item to tackle was setting a theme for the year. I crafted a three-tiered theme—“100 years of sparking memories, wonder & dreams”—that could be used as one long theme or broken up into smaller chunks (e.g. “100 years of sparking wonder”) for different applications. The concept behind this theme was that “memories” would speak to the museum’s past, “wonder” would represent its present, and “dreams” would look toward its future.
Visual Identity
Next up was developing a visual identity for the Centennial that maintained existing brand equity in the market with also calling attention to the fact that 2025 was a special year at the museum. The museum traditionally leans on bright white backgrounds in its visual identity. So to set things apart for the Centennial, I adopted a rich dark purple to serve as the primary backing color which served as a nice canvas for the visual identity to spark off of. To further bring the “sparking” portion of the theme to life, I designed a collection of three spark graphics—each made up of 100 circles—that represented the three parts of the Centennial theme: a pink memories spark, a yellow wonder spark, and a blue dreams spark.
These sparks were used as supporting graphical elements, but the yellow wonder spark also took a central role in the Centennial logo, standing in for the first zero in “100”. The same color coding used for the spark was also reflected in the logo/theme lockups.
As a final special layer to the visual identity, I enlisted the help of local illustrator and former museum employee Jingo M. de la Rosa to create a set of illustrations that reflected the Centennial theme and—like the theme itself—could be broken down into individual pieces or used all together to create one collective piece. This was an incredible challenge and Jingo delivered in a big way.
This collection of assets provided my creative team with an incredible set of building blocks that made it easy to craft dynamic creative work that gave the many, many facets of the Centennial celebration a cohesive look and feel.
Campus Decor
It wouldn’t be a birthday celebration without some decorations. We didn’t want anyone to be able to visit the museum without knowing it was a big year. So we made sure the path to museum—from driving past the dinosaurs breaking out of the building to entering an exhibit—was sprinkled with as many Centennial moments as possible.
Around Town
And we wanted to share the celebration with the city we love calling home. So we called in every favor and collaborated with as many as our favorite partners around the city as possible. It was a big lift, but we reveled in our success every time we heard someone say, “You guys are everywhere this year!”
Our breakout dino found its way downtown.
Sun King brewed up something special just for us.
We were on full display at the Indiana State Fair.
We rolled through the 500 Festival Parade in true museum style with our amazing partners at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
