As the National Museum of Toys/Miniatures seeks to transition from a Kansas City treasure to a nationally recognized institution following a $10.2 million capital campaign and renovation, it needed a renovated identity. Design Ranch created the new brand for what is now the world’s largest collection of fine-scale miniatures and one of the nation’s largest collections of antique toys. The museum has two distinct collections: toys and miniatures.
The Kansas City MO designers took advantage of this very simple split identity and created a logo with an uppercase “T” and a lowercase “m”: the sans serif “T” is an apt personality match for playthings while the serifed and smaller “m” is more appropriate for what is essentially miniature art, including room settings, architectural structures, and decorative arts rendered in small scale. To tease out the identity, photos of actual items from the collections are placed in the same physical positions as letters to create a playful dialogue.
