Partially opened in 2015, Bihar Museum is a history museum for the state of Bihar in India. The vision for the new Museum is to be a world-class showcase for the ancient history and heritage of the lands now known as Bihar. The Bihar Museum’s collection comprises of art objects (stone and bronze sculpture, miniature paintings and thangkas), prehistoric objects, anthropological artefacts and social history objects. The Bihar Museum is the official repository of pre-1800 archaeological finds within the state and all future notable archaeological finds will be stored here. For the design of the Museum building, world renowned architectural firms were invited to submit their proposals and selection was on a competitive basis. Japanese firm, Maki and Associates submitted the winning concept, which they proposed to execute with OPOLIS Architects, based in Mumbai.
Lopez Design (New Delhi, India)
Our Identity consists of a logo and logotype. The Bodhi Tree — having clear associations with growth, learning and enlightenment — emerged as a primary symbol. It connected with Biharis and the world as the Tree of Wisdom. The Peepal is also the State Symbol of Bihar.
The Hindi rendering of Bihar Sangrahalay supports the English name Bihar Museum with the unique “Shirorekha” line of the Devanagari script making a bilingual bridge.
Images (opinion after)
The logo has a number of smart ideas behind it and the execution of most elements is quite elegant. I love the drawing of the tree and how three trunks become one tree. The use of the Shirorekha line — used on top of letters to tie together to form words in Devanagari script — to serve as the baseline of the Latin name is a great metaphor for bridging the two worlds together. While the shapes of the characters in both languages match the leafy nature of the tree drawing I find the stems of all the Latin letters to be too overwrought and, particularly, in the word "museum" all those wispy lines pointing upward and left create a weird rhythm. But as a whole, it's a strong logo. The application is a bit all over the place and I think the biggest problem is the lack of a restrained color palette. It's too many combinations that don't come together as a cohesive voice. I like how the logo is affixed to the left or right corners with the Shirorekha line acting as an anchor. Perhaps the best applications are the social media square images that have a clearer sense of hierarchy and order. Overall, this definitely feels like a museum in India and it's nice to see the firm and client go in this direction rather than the previous trend of all museums having to be some sort of minimalist black and white identity.