DALLAS, TX.- Inviting guests to "discover a world of possibilities," Perot Museum of Nature and Science leaders unveiled a new logo, branding strategy and website to accompany the fresh start promised when the newly constructed museum opens in 2013.

"This is another red-letter day for the Perot Museum of Nature and Science as we unveil our new logo and brand identity," said Nicole G. Small, CEO of the Perot Museum. "This novel branding approach provides a flexible and dynamic canvas to support all the wonderful things the Museum will offer, both inside and outside the building. And it will help us deliver our mission of inspiring minds through nature and science."

The Perot Museum has been named in honor of Margot and Ross Perot, the result of a $50-million gift announced in May 2008 by their children - Katherine Reeves, Carolyn Rathjen, Suzanne McGee, Nancy Perot Mulford and Ross Perot, Jr. The $185-million museum, designed by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Thom Mayne, is currently under construction on a 4.7-acre site at the corner of Field Street and Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas' Victory Park.

Created by internationally renowned design firm Pentagram, the new logo is called "Explanatory Brackets." It features the Perot name prominently displayed in a black serif font called Caslon, with the letter "O" represented by contemporary, bold, red brackets that contains a brightly colored blue-and-green globe.

Museum Marketing Director Beth Hook explained that Museum leaders chose the globe within the brackets to represent the institutional identity of the Perot Museum. The globe represents the importance of science and the vast effect it has on people's daily lives.

"While the globe within the brackets will be the Museum's institutional logo mark, the new logo is a rarely-been-seen-before dynamic logo," said Hook. "The Perot Museum will have the flexibility to switch out the content within the brackets and fill it with innumerable images, reflecting a multitude of science topics and an array of Museum programs, services and collections."

Images within the brackets can include anything from paleontology to zoology, birds to DNA strands, DaVinci to Einstein, and summer camps, field trips and exhibitions.

The power of the new logo can be seen at the new website - perotmuseum.org - designed by Frisco, Texas-based firm LifeBlue Media. Phase I launched today, and the website will culminate to a full-site launch when the Museum opens.

Small also reported that the Museum is expected to open January 2013. She credits the new date to good weather, an accelerated construction schedule and the terrific work of general contractor Balfour Beatty and the project team.

Held at the American Airlines Center, 250-plus people attended today's event including Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, Dallas City Councilmembers, business and civic leaders, donors and more. As guests arrived, they saw a stage adorned with a 10-foot-tall model of the Perot Museum and seven-foot-tall red brackets containing the podium. Midway through the news conference, accompanied by music and confetti cannons, students from Uplift Education's Peak and Laureate Preparatory schools unfolded the walls of the cube to reveal the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science logo. Dallas-based Fauxcades underwrote the news conference through their creation and contribution toward the "big reveal." Museum leaders also gathered at the W Hotel for the annual Chairman's event, hosted by Board Chairman Peggy Allison and generously sponsored by Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, L.L.P.; Ernst & Young, LLP; Frost Bank; and USI Southwest.