The ligatures in Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry

The Museum of Science and Industry is renaming the museum to be the “Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry”

Sounds pretty silly right? Look at how long that name is. Plus, Chicagoans notoriously hate renaming buildings. The Chicago Tribune ran an article with selected Twitter reactions from Chicagoans.

A typical Chicago response:

Me? I don’t mind. Things over time change. I embrace the change.

• Sears Tower is now Willis Tower.
• Marshall Fields is now Macy’s.
• Comiskey Park is now Guaranteed Rate Field. (or as I like to call it, “Down Arrow Park”)
• Amoco Building is now Aon Center.
• Crawford Avenue is now Pulaski Road.

Yes, I am a Chicagoan and I call it “Willis Tower, Macy’s, Down Arrow, and Aon Center”.

With this museum renaming, I took more of a positive approach, and expressed my excitement for how the designer of the logo will handle the multiple ligatures found in “Griffin”.

The ff can be combined together into a ligature. And the fi is also a great letter combination for hot ligature uniting action.

Baskerville Italic uses both the ff and the fi ligature. Because it’s Baskerville. It’s great for ligatures.

Hoefler Text is also good for ligatures:

The Chicago Tribune article included my tweet response in their article. That’s always a pleasant surprise. (Which, for the record, I do work for Tribune Publishing. So I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when I see them using one of my tweets. Although in this case, they are using my tweet as just a regular Chicagoan—not as an employee)

My tweet is second to last in the article. For the historical record, here’s a modified screenshot of my tweet in the article.

Oh, and if the designer wants to go really nuts on ligatures, the “st” in “Industry” is also a common ligature. Hoefler Text gladly provides one.