3. The Visual Language

One of EPCOT’s most enduring and spectacular elements was also one of its most subtle: the visual language that designers invented for it.

It starts with the logo. Though lots and lots of logos were sketched out for the park, designer Norm Iounye decided to draft a logo that played off the recurring circles in the park – from its figure-8 layout to Spaceship Earth. Head of Imagineering Marty Sklar requested that a visual representation of Spaceship Earth be placed in the center of the interlocking rings, commenting on the final product by saying:

The EPCOT Center logo symbolizes unity, fellowship, and harmony around the world. Five outer rings are linked to form the shape of a flower – a celebration of life. The heart of the logo is the Earth, embraced by a star symbolizing hope – the hope that with imagination, commitment, and dedication, we can create a better tomorrow.

From there, Inouye was tasked with creating a set of logos that could be used to concisely, clearly identify and (most importantly) connect pavilions dedicated to communication, technology, energy, transportation, imagination, agriculture, oceans, and the unifying Horizons with its road to tomorrow. Playing off of the circular iconography of the park logo, the symbols Inouye created are beautifully simple, resonant, powerful, and memorable.

Combined with the park’s recurring typeface – a modified Handel Gothic – EPCOT’s internal directional signage, logos, and colors created a consistent visual language used across Future World, further exemplifying the interconnectedness of the pavilions to the park’s larger concept. That complementary design aesthetic alone helped make the park more than the sum of its parts, communicating that these “topics” weren’t chosen at random and indeed added up to a larger message.

Of course, beginning in the 1990s, those once-unified pavilions began to fall apart. Whereas the park had been so beautifully master-planned with unity and cohesion and messaging in mind, two decades of piecemeal thrill rides, random character injections, pavilion closures, and that distaste for the look of the ’80s saw the pavilion icons disappear, typefaces modernized, and the park’s name and logo changed.

There’s no denying that EPCOT is still a place filled with disharmony. Just as it has for the last thirty years, the park is packed with contradictions, piecemeal character overlays, and “brainless” thrill rides right next to “intellectual” remnants of the past. But at least as part of the park’s newest “reimagining” and its aforementioned lean into ’80s nostalgia, we’ve seen the return of a retro-modern take on the park’s original logo (above), a modernized-but-nostalgic World Bold typeface across in-park signage, a refreshed color palette…

…and the return of pavilion logos (including from-scratch icons for Mission: SPACE, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, the cancelled Celebration pavilion, the delayed Play pavilion, and the already-shuttered EPCOT Experience). The new suite of icons is color-coded to represent their grouping into the three new “neighborhoods” formed by the subdividing of the former Future World (World Nature, World Celebration, and World Discovery) and their colors together create the new, updated style guide for the park, with bands of the colors sweeping across construction walls, merchandise, and more.

So even if the substance of EPCOT still feels disjointed, at least there’s an attempt to return to that essential language of style from the past. And frankly, even if those elements are so relatively subtle that most guests would never notice, that’s how some of the best visual language work, subconsciously, warmly, and colorfully offering the navigation, messaging, and unification that EPCOT definitely needs. A touch of the past returned to the present!

4. The Entrance

By design, EPCOT has one of the most unique and powerful entries of any Disney Park. Again defying the established “norms” of post-Disneyland parks, there is no “Main Street.” Instead, guests entered into a courtyard nestled beneath Spaceship Earth itself, marked by oblong planters and wide paths that coalesce around three acrylic pylons in the center of a fountain. From there, guests were funneled further into the park by passing under the iconic geodesic sphere itself and into the center of Future World (now World Celebration) where the (formerly) symmetrical buildings of Communicore / Innoventions served as portals to the pavilions to the east and west.

As we’ve mentioned, Imagineers spent a great deal of time and effort in the ’90s trying to mask EPCOT’s stark, monumental ’80s architecture. According to entertainment writer Jim Hill, a so-called “Project Gemini” initiative planned to break up the vast concrete expanses and stark white and beige of Future World for good, bringing in more greenery and earth tones while injecting more “semi-scientific” thrill rides into the park. Some aspects of “Project Gemini” came to be (like the forested entry of The Land, the addition of characters to The Seas, and thrill-focused rides like Test Track and Mission: SPACE).

But the same wave also introduced a new entry to the park. A sort of capital campaign centered on Millennium Celebration invited guests to “Leave a Legacy.” For $35 for a single person (or $38 for two), guests could have their faces etched into a 1×1 inch steel panel. Over 550,000 guests bought in (to the tune of about $20 million), with their faces added to a new installation to serve as the park’s entry.

Thirty five polished, brown monoliths between 3 and 19 feet tall were constructed in the entry. Designed by Disney Legend John Hench, the idea was that these granite sculptures would appear to “cradle” Spaceship Earth from the point of view of entering guests. But the effect was lost on most visitors. Instead, it felt like the entrance to EPCOT was a somber one, with guests manuevering through a plaza that looked and felt uncomfortably like a graveyard, right down to faces etched onto brown, gravestone-like granite towers.

Even the plaza’s central fountain – where those iconic transluscent pylons had one stood – got in on the act, with new “organic” rock forms to disturb the water’s flow and an earthy, brown patina.

Guests’ “Leave a Legacy” tile purchase included fine print promising that their etched-steel image would remain available for viewing for no less than 20 years. And since the “Leave the Legacy” purchases far outlasted the Millennium Celebration (continuing until 2007), it seemed highly unlikely that the “graveyard” would change until at least 2027. Even then, Disney reported that the largest of the granite “monuments” weighed 50,000 pounds – the equivalent of about five pickup trucks… so maybe they’d never leave.

But at the 2019 D23 Expo – as one of the first major announcements in what would become EPCOT’s reimagining – Disney unveiled concept art for a new entry plaza for the park. Restoring oblong planters, trees, and even flags flying the new pavilion logos (above), the new plaza feels bright, inspiring, and warm.

Like so much of EPCOT’s retro-modernist redesign, the new entryway manages to restore a long-lost piece of the park’s history, unwrap the now-trendy ’80s nostalgia baked into its DNA, and yet feel decidedly sleek and modern in a way that simply never having touched the original entry wouldn’t. Most importantly, it feels much more like a shaded, colorful, and welcoming city park than a graveyard.

And of course, the entire plaza is again built around those long-lost acrylic pylons. By day, light filters through them, casting prismatic rainbows across the park’s entry. By night, they project beams of light into the sky as the re-designed, geometric water fountain changes colors in sync with the “Beacons of Magic” lightning package on Spaceship Earth. In other words, everything old is new again at EPCOT’s entry, now embracing the park’s history and its retro-nostalgic ingredients to immensely beautiful effect.

By the way, the “gravestones” are long gone, but in keeping with their commitment to displaying the “Leave a Legacy” plaques until at least 2027, guests who forked over $35 over two decades ago can find their faces on a new set of walls (in EPCOT’s new colorways) just outside the park’s main entrance. Bring a ladder, though – if your 1×1 inch photo is on the top row, it’s 7 feet 8 inches high!