Sundance + Ford Foundation: Making a New Reality branding and Illustration

Making a New Reality is a research project that investigates strategies for achieving equality and justice in emerging media. New technologies and the emerging media platforms that they are generating are still in their infancy. This moment is an opportunity to establish representation and inclusiveness in new media.

Researcher and writer Kamal Sinclair set out to explore how to make that happen. The result was “Making a New Reality,” an 8-part series of articles supplemented with research, armed with data, and filled with a clear vision of a fairer future. The initiative was funded by the Ford Foundation, with supplemental support from the Sundance Institute and was produced in partnership with Philly-based research studio Dot Connector. Additionally, the articles series is being published in conjunction with Immerse, an initiative of Tribeca Film Institute, MIT Open DocLab and The Fledgling Fund.

The topic of discussion is one that’s close to our hearts. So we were thrilled that we got to develop a brand, visual language, and a series of illustrations for the Medium-based series, which runs until June 2018.

Process

Representation, diversity, technology vs humanity, and change are the central themes of the series. Naturally, they were also the central themes in exploring visual directions for the project. The series beckoned for flexible, human-centric, and futuristic branding to apply to the articles, event materials and other media. They needed to be simple enough to be versatile, and powerful enough to command attention. The message is straightforward: the future is diverse, the future is human, the future is not all about technology.

We presented three illustration concepts: 1) detailed handmade illustrations of imaginary futuristic objects, 2) 3D topographic renderings superimposed with human touches, and lastly 3) a digital mixed-media illustration built using a collage of cut B&W portraits over small tech and nature images overlaid with RGB glitch effects. After some deliberation, direction 3 was selected by the team.

The project also needed a logo to tie everything together. The typemark had to retain some of the dynamism of the illustrative style, while remaining simple and versatile as a logo. So we built a typographic, single color logo with a twist. The Making a New Reality logo morphs and twitches into dozens of different shapes, guaranteeing that no two uses will look dull, yet keeping a consistent brand experience.

Results

The logo and character designs were extended from the original eight, to twenty-four illustration, providing each article with three distinct illustrations. The series launched in late November 2017, and so far stickers and posters have been produced, with other applications planned for the near future.

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Sundance + Ford Foundation: Making a New Reality branding and Illustration

Process

Results

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