The Phoenix Institute

The Phoenix Institute is an international educational organization dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the Western tradition among people who are seriously interested in the question "What is it to be human?" After 30 years of history, we redesigned the visual assets of the brand and reorganized its verbal narrative.

The concept for the icon and the logo came from the mythological beast from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. We took inspiration from the Aberdeen Bestiary of the 12th century and reinterpreted it with contemporary aesthetic insights, to achieve a fresh heraldic spirit avoiding the contemporary clichés of the Phoenix bird. The head seeking the sun, the fire, and its capacity of coming back to life are the symbolic elements associated with the Phoenix values and narrative.

For the verbal assets we took what Phoenix, the mentor of Achilles, tells him in the Iliad about heroism and the goal of education: to transform him into "the doer of great deeds and the speaker of great words." The color palette and the rest of the elements situate the institution within the atmosphere of American universities.