We, the graduating class of MA Innovation Management 2021, invite you to explore the concept of “Becoming”. Becoming is a state in suspense, in flux, and in hope. As innovation managers, we see becoming as an emergent force helping us escape from rigidity and immobility. Our research aims to critique existing innovation management practices embracing the complexity of our turbulent times. Throughout our learning process we have explored the concept of Becoming as a never-ending flow that enables us to creatively imagine better futures.
I led the project as a co-project manager, art director and designer. The project was completely online, therefore, we made the most of digital platform. The graduating cohort organised pre-recorded panel discussions and written interview with experts from the industry under four sub-themes: Becoming hybrid, Becoming proactive, Becoming social, Becoming affective. Watch the discussion on Youtube here, or click the videos below.
Visual concept
Becoming visual concept is represent by gradual movement of colours, merging and shifting which highlighted the on-going change. The chosen colour scheme has a mixed of vivid colours and pastel to show diversity of the cohort. The colours will be the main element of the whole project.
Sub-themes
‘Becoming proactive’ involves noticing unexpected changes in the world. We see, think and collaborate, not only to solve problems but also to identify new problems. The theme's colours are hot pink and purple to display the progression and proactiveness.
‘Becoming social’ explores topics such as food systems, influencers and crowds. The power of dialogues taking place between various actors is the researchers’ key interest. The theme's colours are pastel blue and lilac for fresh and encouraging atmosphere.
‘Becoming hybrid’ asks why it is important to create new hybrids, and how these hybrids across disciplines can lead to innovative practices. The merging of pink and yellow represented the two different world that come together.
‘Becoming affective’ seeks to bring about a valuable social change in defense of nature and aims to raise awareness of the pivotal role of art, humanities, science and economics as a crucial nexus that fosters innovation. Purple and blue visualised the transformation and future thinking, beyond human aspect of the theme.
going, growing, and incomplete
The logotype developed from incomplete typeface (Atom by Moonbandit) that supported the concept well. The typeface also articulated a futuristic and digital look and feel to suit the year of going online.
To balance out with the futuristic logotype, I chose a modern serif typeface for the sub-theme title and body texts. It provided an interesting contrast and gave the visual language more depth.
digital outlet
All work were displayed online. The main outlet is Central Saint Martins graduate showcase website, MA Innovation Management Instagram and Linkedin. There showed the different treatments of the theme colour to fit on the platform for more interesting overview. I collaborated with the marketing team, who created a marketing strategy and made the most out of the platform to build engagement.
The gradient colours allowed us to have a playful posts, stretching colours across the grid. Whereas on showcase website the treatment is more simple due to college-wide website structure and accessibility requirement.
Personal profile page
The personal profile page mainly focus on graduating students' individual research topic and is less related to sub-groups discussion. We have illustrations as an additional visual elements to link to individual research topic. It signified their innovation research so that the audiences would grasp what their topic might be. We collaborated with Thai talented illustrator Lili Tae (Photos below).
Graduate showcase
project's Challenge
The challenge of this project was the online working space and time zones due to the Covid-19 pandemic since kicked off the project in January 2021 and finished in June 2021. Half of the team mates are in different continent with up to nine hours time difference. Although we had great technical support from various online tools and collaboration platforms, it was a real challenge to produce creative assets and to fight with mental instability from staying under lockdown. There were many miscommunication and slipperiness of communicating online. There were also struggles to adapt to new tools and platforms. The team needed to come together and weekly reflected on their performance and check-ins to make sure everything went as smoothly as possible. I could say that the innovation in this project is how we manage ourselves in many situations, deal with cultural and working style differences, and constant changes in respond to uncertain context and landscape.
Check out the showcase page and explore incredible research from MA Innovation Management class of 2021 here.