SynBio is UC San Diego's synthetic biology project incubator that I cofounded. I designed the Fiat Lux theme for our 2015 iGEM team project submission, where we represented UC San Diego on an international platform. The iGEM Foundation is a nonprofit organization that hosts a yearly worldwide synthetic biology research conference & competition at Boston, MA - attracting 400+ teams of collegiate and graduate students.
Role - Logo, Banner Design, Print
Project Duration - Summer 2015 / 10 weeks
We merged traditional elements of the bioluminescence project with the concept of synthetic biology. A lighthearted teal and professional dark navy draws parallels and associations to the concept of synthetic biology, and it results in a nice balance of fun + scientific. Fiat Lux, or "Let there be light", sits on a nice coincidental overlap between the team's bioluminescence project and the university's motto.
• Synthetic biology, or engineering biology, draws parallels to legos. Geometric shapes and cogs reflect the lego characteristic of engineering, or the "synthetic" side. Hexagons commonly represent nucleotides, and flasks represent lab work. Plasmids are another prospective representation of "biology".
• The school mascot can be symbolized with the trident. The university motto is Fiat Lux, which has parallels to light, the basis of our project.
• All final designs are drafted in black and decided on before given color.
The team started out brainstorming ideas on the whiteboard. Synthetic biology is like legos, so we began rearranging symbols of "engineering" and "lab". We kept the shapes more geometric, so stick to the lego concept. Many more sketches were made, though they sadly got lost over the years.In one of my sketches, I began fitting flasks inside a gear to represent synthetic biology. The flask is hexagon shaped, the symbol of a nucleobase - the foundation of DNA. I added triangles to make it look like light, because our project involved bioluminescence. In some designs, I tried fitting a trident because our school mascot was Triton.
In our final design, we have a classic lab flask encompassed a cog - representing both the biology and the synthetic engineering nature of it. Geometric triangles characterize our project's focus on bioluminescence. The edges within the flask were rounded to give it a softer, more realistic feel.
