The Blyth Music & Visual Arts Centre

Imperial College London

The Blyth Music & Visual Arts Centre is named after an Imperial member of staff, Neville Blyth, whose bequest allowed for its creation. As a facility it provides members of Imperial with regular art exhibitions and concerts, music practice facilities and art workshops, as well as awarding creative bursaries.

Despite existing for 20 years, many different variations of the facilities name were in use, sometimes only including music or art, or shortening to the Blyth Centre. In addition to this confusion, students and staff who were unaware of who or what Blyth Centre offered often assumed because of Imperial’s specialities that the ‘Centre’ was another science or medical research institute within the college. They commissioned a sub brand to sit within the overarching Imperial guidelines to create a coherent identity across their communications and facilities to improve awareness and uptake among staff and students.

I introduced a single, consistent name ‘The Blyth Music and Visual Arts Centre’, bringing clarity to their purpose. A new shorthand reference of ‘The Blyth’ was encouraged by emphasising it in the wordmark, and minimised the association with ‘centre’, setting it apart from other institutions within the college. As The Blyth’s facilities are spread throughout Imperial’s campuses, The Blyth naming convention was carried through to every offering (The Blyth Art, The Blyth Music, The Blyth Gallery, etc), unifying previously unrelated spaces. This was further consolidated by a typographic treatment, using The Blyth in a light weight and the facility in bold throughout materials.

Another way of distinguishing The Blyth from the science and medical faculties was the introduction of a series of hand drawn circles and rings. Much of the college’s existing branding is angular and geometric, and the soft shapes of The Blyth make it stand out among the academic content. The hand drawn shapes naturally lend themselves to the creative aesthetic of The Blyth, and are evocative of the use of hands to create, both in music and the arts.