Citizen lab, Madrid

Medialab Prado is a public lab in Madrid where people make things together across culture, science, and technology. It runs through many smaller laboratories, each its own team, each its own subject.

They came in wanting a separate identity for every lab. I argued the opposite. A brand for each would have fractured one institution into as many brands as it had teams. One system, built to flex, would make every lab read as part of the same place. They went with one.

The system is a single dotted grid. The grid is the brand, shared by all of them. Each lab draws its own pattern on that grid, its own way of joining the dots, and takes its own colour. Same structure underneath, a different signal on top. A poster tells you which lab it is before you read a word.

The grid is the institution. The patterns are the labs.

Scope: brand strategy and identity system.