Creative Informatics
BRIEF:
Creative Informatics aims to grow the creative industries in Edinburgh by building the number of existing businesses and creative entrepreneurs who can confidently innovate with data from 2018–2023. Six different ongoing programs have been designed to bring in both entrepreneurs, businesses, cultural institutions together to develop data-driven design. The brief was to design the Identity, Website and ongoing promotion for events, showcase conference and social media.
CONCEPT & OUTCOMES:
Drawing influence from the duality of machine-created and human-created design, this identity is rooted in the term ‘creative machine’ – not only the name for software that can create or edit content, but also a viable label for a human being. The lines are blurred between creation and co-creation. This duality is reflected in a typographic-led concept: the key typeface has both constructed and hand-drawn – almost calligraphic – characters. All 9 AHRC supported cluster across the UK were also asked to develop their own version of an X, creating their own identity within the overarching concept across all. The image placeholder symbol X was created to reflect the nature of data-driven work, which is neither static in content nor in input.
To create a strong key visual language for images, a duo-tone colour scheme in metallic and lemon yellow was chosen to be combined with black&white photography, playing with the effect of revealing and hiding information.
Each funded program was assigned a bespoke set of 3 icons, which were expanded to link partners and programmes together as well.
DATA-DRIVEN PROMOTION:
The most prominent outcome has been POLYCANVAS, a data-driven poster, which is used for Creative Informatics online events. The poster displays and arranges content by chance on the canvas–with each content loop being triggered by live data input (Github’s API). Apart from being a tool to display content, Schmeisser was curious to investigate what it means to co-design with an algorithm.
More to follow soon.