Designing for Orbit: A Logo Sprint for the NYUAD Space Art Lab

On September 29, 2026, the NYUAD Space Art Lab came to the Visual Design Lab in search of a visual identity. Prof. Leonardo Barilaro — Visiting Associate Professor of Space Technology and Sonic Arts, Artist in Residence, and the lab's founder — opened the session by introducing it as a transdisciplinary hub generating polymathic knowledge at the intersection of space science, art, and the humanities. The lab's ASTROBEAT payload launched to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-31 in November 2024.

Students then worked in groups through two rounds. The first began with primary research, and each group produced an initial logo. A shared discussion surfaced the themes recurring across them: Fibonacci spirals, swooshes, rockets, orbits. Groups then developed a second concept in response. After a short break, the second round asked students to work past that shared vocabulary entirely: the two further directions they produced reached for movement, density, and gravity.

Students from the Yes Logo Fall 2026 class, taught by Professor Goffredo Puccetti, will take the full set of ideas forward into a proposed identity for the lab.