The Story Behind Biocode’s Logo

Biocode’s logo often sparks curiosity: why does a carbon footprint calculator designed for the food industry feature a bird’s head in the logo?

Surprisingly, our logo isn’t a bird at all, though at first glance it might seem like one – it’s actually a dinosaur! The story begins when our team, in the middle of redesigning Biocode’s visual identity, went to lunch in Helsinki. There, on a restaurant table, someone had left a child’s toy dinosaur, which caught our attention and lingered in our thoughts.

That dinosaur soon became part of our discussions about brand identity. Dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth around 65 million years ago when a massive asteroid struck, wiping out much of the planet’s life in an instant.

Today, scientists warn that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, driven by human activity. Climate change, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, is the biggest factor behind this crisis. Since our mission is to reduce emissions, combat climate change, and that way also help slow down this extinction wave, the dinosaur became a fitting symbol for our work.

The Evolution of the Dinosaur Logo

The logo was developed with this idea in mind, but the team wanted to avoid anything too literal or obvious. Instead, they aimed to leave space for imagination.

This led to the creation of a sketch of a brontosaurus – a massive, plant-eating dinosaur that roamed during the Jurassic period. In the first iterations, the brontosaurus was shown moving from right to left. Later, the direction was flipped, with the dinosaur moving forward to symbolize progress, though its gaze was turned backward, as if ensuring the whole herd is following along.

Eventually, we removed the full brontosaurus drawing from our visual materials. What was left was just its head, which became the symbol for Biocode’s new logo and visual identity.

You might already recognize this image – it’s familiar from our software, website, documents, and social media channels.

The brontosaurus head was designed to subtly form the letter “C” in our wordmark logo.

The “C” also represents the “less than” symbol (<), a fitting nod to the emission reductions that Biocode’s solutions help our clients achieve.

The new logo and visual identity were crafted in collaboration with the marketing agency Werklig, Biocode’s team, and designer Joonas Sandell.