Pentagram has designed a new identity for Refik Anadol’s Dataland, a new museum operating at the intersection of human imagination and the creative potential of machines.

Newly opened in Frank Gehry’s the Grand LA in Los Angeles, Dataland is an ambitious look at what a museum experience can be. Unfolding across five immersive, multisensory galleries, visitors are guided through a data-driven kaleidoscope of light, sound, and scent. Described by Anadol as a “laboratory of imagination,” Dataland opened its doors with an inaugural exhibition “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” on view through January 2027. 

Pentagram worked with Anadol and his team beginning in 2022, designing an identity system that could live and grow as Dataland went from an idea to an institution. Key to this challenge was finding a way to communicate alongside and overtop of the dense, enchanting textures of Anadol’s signature visualizations. An additional layer of complexity came from the desire for the museum to have its own voice without losing sight of the minimalist sensibility that Anadol and his studio, RAS, have been developing over the last decade. 

The logotype, adapted from Dinamo’s ABC Solar, grounds the visual system with a geometric rhythm of round and straight elements. This simplicity offers a contrast to the work's mesmerizing details, as well as a conceptual nod to the typographic “disruptors” of the twentieth century who preferred and pioneered similar languages. To accompany the mark, Pentagram designed a bold, shorthand brand symbol, a further graphic reduction of the letter “d” whose overlapping elemental forms allude to the blurring of the digital and physical worlds inside of the museum. 

The logo is supported by a typographic stack more aligned with Anadol’s technical aesthetic, with Artex (Optimo) and Gridnik (The Foundry Type) applied across the museum’s website, visitor experience, and promotional materials in tight, minimal blocks. A rigid toolkit of transparency, color-blocking, ruled lines, and negative space allows for a typographic approach that prioritizes legibility and structure without neutralizing the allure of immersion. Motion graphics developed by the internal RAS team further amplify the pairings with skittering movement and mechanical transitions that mirror the museum’s work.

The approach to color is cinematic and spare, with fields of black and white punctuated by a supporting palette of saturated, digital-first accent colors. Drawn from predominant color families found in the galleries, the applied palette ensures that even flat backgrounds vibrate with the same energy as the museum itself. 

The Pentagram team rounded out the system with an integrated approach to data visualization, designing a series of charts and graphs to echo the geometric qualities of the logotype, applied on top of color and photography. Scale, repetition, and contrast transform these basic forms once again, converting bars and circles into rich, informative visuals well-suited for summaries of visitor experiences, gallery-by-gallery comparisons, and more. 

Regardless of concept or content, as new exhibitions open and the museum of the future becomes the museum of the present, the identity will remain a flexible companion to whatever Anadol and his machine dream up next.

 All imagery courtesy of Refik Anadol Studio.