Our team undertook an iterative, research-led approach to define the current brand while identifying opportunities for elevation:
The audit process can only be described as an invitation to luxuriate in an embarrassment of riches. Their wonderful staff lead us through the shelves of the Lloyd’s physical collection, including illuminated manuscripts, hand-colored botanical illustrations, pharmaceutical artifacts, and the original “Specific Strength” medicine packaging that defined the brothers’ early success.
Through interviews with staff, board members, researchers, and culturally curious casual visitors, a brand personality emerged that balances academic rigor with an invitational spirit. We benchmarked the Lloyd against aspirational peers such as the Wellcome Collection (London) and the Huntington Library, as well as local civic north stars like the Cincinnati Zoo and the Mercantile Library. Our review of the 2024 National Snapshot of U.S. Museums highlighted the rising demand for immersive experiences centered on nature and sustainability, a core strength of the Lloyd.
The strategy positions the Lloyd as a New Bridge of Knowledge, uniting historic collections with contemporary learners. The future would come into bold focus, in living color.
Camera phones in hand, our team poured through over a century’s worth of Lloyd Brothers ephemera. We encountered a range of intriguing packaging and collateral, including an old pharmaceutical bottle with a unique label featuring bold yet slightly quirky slanted L’s.
Using the label as inspiration, we began developing a new mark. We kept the slanted double L’s, matched the angle to the Y, and flattened the top, imbuing the mark with a more modern aesthetic. The result is a beautifully balanced and bold logo that accomplishes that thing that every brand hopes for: a nod to the past with visions of the future.
The first thing you encounter when you look through Lloyd’s collection is an endless array of colors from neon to muted. The brand’s color palette, or ‘color librar’ as we like to call it, would need to be expansive in order to generate matching tones for collateral that can utilize any piece from the collection.
Our typographic system is equally indebted to the past. The brothers had excellent taste in typography, which lead us to Roslindale as a headline that matched treatments found on their business cards and ingredient menus.
A suite of custom icons and pictograms represents the diverse facets of the collection from fungi and flora to laboratory glass and rare volumes, providing a modular system for wayfinding, communication, and merchandise .
The brand is anchored by the definitive statement: Knowledge Grows Here. This tagline encapsulates the Lloyd’s mission to catalyze nature-based knowledge and bridge the past with the future.
It was a profound honor to steward this transition, ensuring that while the Lloyd Library & Museum evolves into its next chapter, its legacy as a trusted, immersive sanctuary for the curious remains firmly rooted for the next 150 years.
