2025 Inspired by my childhood love of animals and what got me into art, as well as branding agencies I admire such as Pentagram, I sought out to create an adapatable logo and modern brand identity for the Pittsburgh Zoo. By studying successful rebrands and understanding the importance of storytelling, I was able to create bold and recognizable deliverables that suit today's marketing landscape.
My goal was to create a colorful, playful brand system that focused on geometric and simplified shapes as well as merchandise such as stationary that showed their branding. This new brand identity, which is created by the recognizable three rivers shape seen on the map of Pittsburgh, brings a fresh look to the zoo's presence and is full of storytelling and adaptablity.
In the creation of the below mockups, I used WOMP3D, an innovative 3D modeling software on web. You’re able to create designs through combining shapes, and it was a lot of fun to learn how to create these animal highlighters using this program. I also created animal erasers using my brands art style by creating SVG files and converting it to a 3D model. I downloaded several 3D models from adobe stock and used stager to create the below mockup to showcase my vision of the cute and colorful stationary I imagined the gift shop selling!
Above you can see some different tape designs! While creating this brand identity, I also created re-usable design parts such as the bamboo and the leaf and small star-like cover designs on the lion tape. Each of these features famous animals from the zoo.
The 3rd one is a reference to the Pittsburgh Zoo’s “Penguin Parade”, where they let the penguins walk around the zoo!