Science Museum

The logo of the Science Museum accurately describes half of the museum. The logo feels digital and futuristic. It gives off a binary-computer feel with the straight lines and angles. I really appreciate the symmetry and consistency among the letters. Every letter has the same shell, the three outer lines, and those are rotated to make the letters. M's and E's are the same, as are C's and U's. The I is very interesting, as it blends in at first glance, but uniquely, they've separated it. While it is lowercase and the other letters seem to be upper case, it blends perfectly and does not take away from the balance of the logo. The cleverness and futuristic look endow this feeling into me of the "possibilities of science" despite it's clicheness. However this "pushing the boundaries of science" really only applied to half of the museum. 

Photo courtesy of google.com

The South Wing of the museum was, for lack of a better term, cool. The five story display felt fresh in content and in appearance. The lights dimmed and the room looked like the blue in the logo. The content was glowing, drawing ones attention to it, and interesting. It used computers and interactive displays. However, most of the other half of the museum was more a "history of science" with boring text panels and plain glass displays. The futuristic look the logo and South Wing established was gone. The History of Medicine felt like it belonged in a natural history museum, not this cool science museum. However, the Plasticity exhibit, where all of the content was painted onto long rectangles of red plastic, again had a unique feel without being "spacey" but still pushing boundaries. Maybe it didn't push any scientific boundaries rather than display boundaries, but plastic is continually developed, so it fit the content. Overall, the logo appeals to the younger museum patrons as a recognizable pattern and to trained eyes, catching the creativity within the logo.

I found the museum to be easily navigable. I saw signs for cafes and bathrooms in every room, as well as maps near elevators and at the entrance to every new room. However, we learned about consistency with font and color, and as I said before, half the museum was unified and the other half was disjointed. Colors, designs, and text fonts (and even maps) were all consistent with the logo in the South Wing, but there were different fonts and a rainbow of colors around the rest of the museum. 

photo courtesy of google.com

My one complaint regarding navigation would be that I didn't know the South Wing did not connect to the rest of the museum until I reached the top floor. I think some signage on or near the maps for the South Wing, notifying visitors they needed to go back to ground level to see the rest of the museum, would have been nice.

The gift shops were aimed at children, but nevertheless they had cool science related toys. Certainly part of the point of the museum is to teach visitors some information, so some of the gift shop items were books and some were just toys. The food was a typical expensive cafeteria. I noticed the shops and restaurants were more consistent with the logo than the rest of the museum, which shows me the museum is trying to convert the rest of itself to this one brand. I didn't eat because I'm not made of money.

photo courtesy of google.com

The display cases, again, were half great and half boring. Reading a panel on a wall about an object sitting in glass is tedious and not critical to read in my opinion. However, when the objects and text panels are glowing and the display cases are not boring rectangles but busy 3D objects or interactive computer games, everything seems vital to explore and touch. The South Wing had fantastic computer activities and unique group games. Socializing in these exhibits were about the exhibit rather than talking about something else while pretending to read about old cars. In the main museum room, only the plasticity display was one I wanted to read the information because of the uniqueness and touchability (probably not a word) of the panels. It was a fun and bright place to be in, which made the information seem more interesting. Science museums should be interactive (as opposed to an art museum which probably should be less so) and the interactive exhibits taught me information, and the ones with objects in a case (History of Medicine, History of Communication) certainly didn't.

photo courtesy of http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

My favorite exhibit was the Listening Post. I sat for about 10 minutes watching, and even a few minutes with my eyes closed. The Listening Post took real time I-Statements from the Internet and posted them across one of over 100 small screens while a narrating voice said them out loud. There were some beeps along the way as well. It was a large room that had very little light, but these many computer screens glowed in the room. I sat in one of the chairs right in front and just listened and felt serene. It was oddly peaceful and disturbing at the same time. The amount of material this machine had to process but presented it rhythmically was incredible to listen to. Further, this exhibit can most accurately depict how technology can be art. It served a purpose and made me think: both signs of art. 

Some facts I learned:

When a museum does not stick to a specific brand throughout the museum, it bothers me. I hope the administrators are planning on transforming the main building into the South Wing-type museum because the two clash. Very few things were interesting in the main building while everything was interesting in the South Wing.

It is possible for a museum to target children and adults. Some information was incredibly interesting for adults only, like most of the South Wing, but children were still playing because it was interactive. 

Interactivity is crucial to museums like this one.

The content is less important than the display. Computer displays and unique shapes are more interesting than text panels and rectangle glass boxes.

There aren't many water fountains in London Museums.