In 2022 the world celebrated the bicentenary of the creation of Egyptology after in 1822 the French scholar Jean-François Champollion for the first time decoded the ancient Egyptian script on the Rosetta Stone.

This discovery allowed scientists to read ancient Egyptian texts and laid the foundation for the science of Egyptology.

The festive events included a range of publications, exhibitions and an international social media campaign on different sites explaining hieroglyphs meanings and introducing artefacts that were key to understanding ancient Egyptian civilisation.

We were asked to design the logo for the celebration. The logo uses the shape of the Rosetta Stone which originally has three registers bearing inscriptions of the same text in three languages: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Egyptian Demotic script, and Ancient Greek. All the three registers in the logo now carry the wordmark which symbolises unity,

openness, accessibility of the world heritage and interosculation of the ancient languages which Champollion’s discovery contributed to the world culture.

The logo uses Egyptian Blue colour which in ancient Egypt represented creation and rebirth, in this context - the awakening of ancient Egyptian heritage through study of ancient texts and language.