The story behind the Opertus Mundi logo
30—Apr—2020, by Roleplay
The background story about the conception and design of the Opertus Mundi logo
What is geospatial data?
Geospatial data refers to data that is associated with or contains information about a specific location on Earth. Opertus Mundi will create a single digital marketplace for this data. Roleplay as a member of the consortium has designed a unique visual identity for this purpose.
In the process of exploring what geospatial data stands for, we identified a number of different aspects, from types and categorisations to the actual information such data contains. These all vary a great deal, so we decided to take a step back and understand the simple essence – the common factor – of geospatial data.
Geographic coordinates
Although geospatial data combines a set of elements like location, attributes, and temporal information, we understood that the main thing that distinguishes it from other data types is location-based information in the form of coordinates on Earth. Geographic coordinate systems describe every location with a unique set of numbers, letters, and symbols. This in turn provides a unique identifier for each location, as well as a coherent representation of all such locations.
Merging old maps with digital elements
The term may have only been coined recently, but geospatial data has played a prominent role in human communication and evolution since the moment people started to record the places they visited. In the research on this subject, old maps seemed like a highly inspirational reference because of how they rendered an initial perception of the world. Our design decisions thus focused on bringing old maps and elements of the digital era together to create a unique and rather romantic identity for the Opertus Mundi brand.
The colour scheme is very loyal to this direction: Yellow ochre represents old oxidised paper, which is combined with strong, bright blue to reflect the contemporary times.
And so the Opertus Mundi logo was created as a spatial reference to the single digital place for trading and purchasing geospatial data.
