Jet Set Natural — A Natural Jet Lag Remedy.
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Jet Set Natural is an all-natural jet lag remedy created by a father-son duo. Eric Gentry MD is a Board-Certified Sleep Specialist, while his son Alex Gentry is a graduate of Interaction Design and Entrepreneurship from Syracuse University. The duo has developed, designed, and packaged a proprietary jet lag remedy by leveraging their unique skills and resources. Jet Set Natural is the only jet lag remedy created by a Board-Certified Sleep Specialist, meaning it's the only product on the market backed by true expertise. The product's formulation is bimodal: Jet is to be consumed before take off for relaxation in-flight, while Set is to be consumed upon landing. Set helps alleviate symptoms associated with jet lag, enabling travelers to hit the ground running. Additionally, Jet Set Natural supports organizations such as Carbonfund.org, with a goal to help reduce the traveler's carbon footprint from jet travel.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Jet Set Natural’s design was developed passionately with the intent to create a beautiful product that would better the world. Alex and his fellow Syracuse Design alum, Emily Simms, developed a refined yet welcoming graphic language which makes travelers feel comfortable about consuming a product for the first time before a long flight. Jet Set Natural’s packaging has taken human factors into consideration, as well as way-finding through graphic design and semiotics.
Who worked on the project?
Eric Gentry and Alex Gentry (Co-Founders), Emily Simms (Graphic Designer).
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JUMO’s Visual Identity System
Company JUMO
Introduction Date December 1, 2017
Project Website https://experience.jumo.world/brand/visual-language/ and https://experience.jumo.world/brand/expressions/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Our mission is to deliver valuable financial services to billions of people – and serve them individually – by using technology to realize true low-cost financial services and thus drive inclusion. That necessitates much automation and inevitable distance between us and our end user. But our users are unique, and unique needs and rapidly changing environments shape their unique behaviours; we serve millions of customers and have grown rapidly. We, as a design team, were inspired to approach our brand design in a way that reflected how the business works, it’s rapidly growing scale and our users’ needs. This meant a visual language that is flexible and fast-to-iterate, thereby allowing designers to solve problems that serve different users through memorable experiences while remaining consistent as a brand. To begin with we classify certain brand elements as either a zero or as a one, and explore combinations of both to create bold expressions that build a JUMO experience. Zero - represents warmth, creativity and opportunity which resolves as a palette of brand elements such as bold, warm colours, photography and illustrations. One represents technology - the rational that empowers the abstract – something which we express as cooler colours, hard lines, grid structures and typography. Both are used in combination to create expressions that tell our story. This systematic approach to visual design inspired a modular design system which is a set of design principles created for and by designers to build brand elements that individually resemble JUMO but could be used in a variety of combinations and iterations to create a JUMO experience. The flexibility allows designers to create unique experiences for different users in different environments while remaining consistent as a brand. Where this has meant working to support business processes – we have ensured a consistency of brand by empowering our staff with a toolkit of brand elements and templates which can quickly be assembled to deliver documents which have high-gloss characteristics and ensure consistency.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
A good example of this is the work we did to deliver JUMO Drive – a product which empowers drivers on ride-sharing applications to own their own vehicles. The product is not something we envisioned when we first defined our brand elements, but is an example of how our brand vocabulary and building blocks can be reassembled to react to new brand statement which have a recognizable quality, but are unique. We emphasize the importance of the customer and this plays out against different backgrounds to make a familiar sound but in different ways. The product has adapted the line design to reflect the grid pattern of the cities in which this is deployed, rooting our work in its environment.
Who worked on the project?
The Design team: Alna van Rensburg (UI Designer) Maria John (Designer) Miranda Myburgh (Head of Design) Monica Alaya (Lead Designer) Raeygan Harris (UI Designer)
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La Ceiba Coffee Cooperative
Company Astro Studios
Introduction Date November 1, 2017
Project Website https://www.laceibacoffee.com/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
We are using design to empower a coffee co-op to organize and seek a fair price for their beans. La Ceiba Coffee is a cooperative of 47 small land-holding coffee growers in Palin, Guatemala. The members of the co-op are indigenous Poqoman people and have been the backbone of coffee culture in the region for generations. While the co-op has been around for nearly 50 years, it's only in the last few years they've been able to organize and buy back the land to run their coffee fincas. Our work with La Ceiba has been to help build a brand and tell the story of local farmers in Palin along with the coffee they grow. This brand is being used to help promote their coffee to small batch roasters in the states (specifically the Bay Area), to recruit farmers to the co-op and start to rebuild farmer’s trust in growing coffee again. Our team created a bright, playful logo and branding system that brings a local feel to the La Ceiba collateral. The logo is reminiscent of a sun rising rising behind a coffee plant and the patterns were inspired by the colorful garments and textiles common in the region.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Growing up, it seems like our options for coffee were Folgers or Maxwell House, whereas now, it is possible for a person to buy coffee beans knowing all kinds of details about the beans they grind -- everything from the country of origin, altitude, date of harvest / roasting, type of plant, how it was processed and even details about the farmer and farm. This third wave coffee movement has changed the relationship between coffee farmers and coffee roasters and now has the ability for coffee to be branded and sold in a new and more conscious way. As consumers have become more aware of these details, we realized the importance of making our design both simple and beautiful but also showcasing the unfiltered human elements behind the process. Farmers were interviewed and photographed during a trip to Palin and their stories are told through our design. By building the La Ceiba brand, it’s helping to legitimize the co-op both locally in Palin and here in the Bay Area, building confidence in the farmers as well as the roasters. La Ceiba Coffee is currently for sale via their website and Red Bay Coffee in Oakland is set to import and roast 10,000+ lbs of beans this season to sell at their store and cafe.
Who worked on the project?
Astro Studios design team for La Ceiba
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Lafayette Anticipations
Company Wolff Olins
Introduction Date March 10, 2018
Project Website https://www.lafayetteanticipations.com/fr
Why is this project worthy of an award?
For 120 years, French department store Galeries Lafayette has built a business around the idea of ‘a unique encounter of creativity and commerce, accessible to all’. But rather than simply market the product of creativity, or idolize the art itself, Guillaume Houzé, President of the Foundation, wanted to get closer to the process itself. He launched Lafayette Anticipations, an art foundation in Paris, which showcases work that challenges people's notions of art and - uniquely - brings making to the fore. Creatives of all kinds are invited to develop boundary-pushing work in the in-house, high-tech workshop, and our brief was to design a brand to embody this. With production always continuing in the background, the feeling of anticipation would be present and powerful for the audience, so it became our focus. The identity needed to convey this, and at the same time be easy to apply across print, digital and signage. Inspired by the insight that concealing and revealing words in part creates more anticipation than showing it in full, Wolff Olins anchored the brand on a dynamic bespoke typeface that appears to be in constant mechanical motion, even when static. Letters in a word are cropped in a random order, with an algorithm ensuring that typing the same word twice yields different letter combinations. This coincided with the mechanical architecture of the Rem Koolhaas-designed building. It’s comprised of four motorized platforms that can move independently, meaning the space can be reconfigured in 49 ways. As the artists make their pieces, so the building makes different spaces. It speaks directly to the diverse international target audience, whose main intention is to experience something fresh and immerse themselves in ideas in the making. At the heart of our execution is a dynamic, mechanical and bespoke typeface that appears to be in constant motion. The actual foundation opened on the 10th of March 2018, and has made waves in the media ever since, which is hugely impressive in such a short time.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Anticipations Sans was designed in 3 phases. The first phase was the design of the 'base' letterforms, inspired by the mechanical structure of the building and it’s pure geometrical forms. The second phase involved concealing parts of each letter to obtain the full 'cropped' glyph set, and the last phase involved writing an algorithm. This automates the randomised glyph selection when words are typed, striking a balance between unpredictability and legibility. It embodies the sense of anticipation created by ideas in the making. It’s easy to apply at any scale: from large, animated signage in the concourse to static formats in the building frontage; from printed materials like tote bags to moving image across social media, Vimeo channels, and cinema idents.
Who worked on the project?
Sidney Lim, Senior Designer Chris Moody, Chief Design Officer Brian Boylan, Mentor Neil Cummings, Creative Director Calle Enstrom, Senior Designer Pierre Antoine Arlot, Programme Director Colophon Foundry, Typography Richard Coldicott, Animator Agence Zélé, Signage Design Agence Dream On, Implementation Agency Cassie Simpson, Account Manager
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/259428065
LA Original
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Los Angeles has undergone a creative renaissance, both culturally and economically. Art, music, food, fashion and tech are booming. Today, one in six jobs in LA are part of the creative economy, with more manufacturing muscle than anywhere else in America. LA has become the new creative capital of the world, and it was time to claim this identity. We partnered with Mayor Eric Garcetti, the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development to create LA Original, the first-ever cohesive brand for the City of Los Angeles. LA Original represents the city’s unparalleled creativity and diversity, while raising money to support the underserved creative community. The brand idea consists of only two letters—L and A—forming a dynamic letterform that can showcase and inspire LA creativity. It utilizes a conceptual space between the letters, and comes to life when filled with the people, places and things that define our city. LA’s new identity launched with the online film “Space to Create” featuring 50+ LA-based creative icons such as musician and Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar, who also shared his then-upcoming single "HUMBLE." for film’s backing track; chef Roy Choi; architect Frank Gehry; jewelry designer Maya Brenner; artist and activist Shepard Fairey; LA Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel; among others. And to reach a broad swatch of Angelenos and tourists, we canvassed the city with 400+ OOH placements and took over international and domestic terminals at LAX across 300+ screens, as well as logo-centric social content. Additionally, for the lifestyle brand we created a diverse product line developed using the identity with proceeds supporting creative entrepreneurs in LA’s underserved communities. Pop-up retail around the city in locations like The Broad Museum, Ace Hotel and the newly opened Westfield Mall curated and sold 40+ custom LA Original products. Mayor Eric Garcetti uses the campaign in worldwide diplomacy and at-home, having recently highlighted the campaign during his 2018 State of City address, and gifting LA Original products to Mayors of Paris and London, Anne Hildalgo and Sadiq Khan. The campaign galvanized Angelenos, with over 80 local creators contributing in some capacity. It was a passion project for the love of LA—all images, art, footage, and music licensing was on a shoestring budget—and has gone on to garner 99MM+ earned media impressions. Proceeds from the over 6K LA Original products have funded LA’s underserved communities. Other qualitative metrics have been outstanding, scoring 100% in positive sentiment and passion intensity. This innovative approach to civic branding goes beyond creating a city logo, igniting culture while fueling the city’s economy and creative spirit. It gives the creative and manufacturing communities of Los Angeles a badge of honor to be worn with pride and shared with the world.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
The civic identity system was built to reflect the city it represents. The dynamic logo adapts and grows, as does LA’s sprawling 502 square miles and 114 neighborhoods. The logo is inviting, asking to be filled, as does LA with 4 million residents and sanctuary city status. A color palette inspired by the Los Angeles sky, from sunrise to sunset, adds vibrancy and energy. The inclusive logo is an invitation for local and global citizens to fill LA with their own creativity. Los Angeles is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with people from approximately 140 different countries, speaking roughly 86 different languages. With immigrant-friendly laws, LA is a popular home for those seeking a new life in America. The city also has the unique distinction of a place without a majority population, creating a truly vibrant cultural scene. Geared toward diverse Angelenos and LA-loving tourists, this new civic identity elevates the openness and diversity of LA. Interaction with the mark was built to be inclusive of other logos, illustration, art, photography, people, places of interest, textures and standalone products. All of these objects can interact with the space by being placed in front, behind or straddling the line. The logo expands and contracts with the visuals acting as a dynamic platform to frame and elevate LA’s creative culture. Showcasing the dynamic nature of the logo, applications have been used within print, film, motion graphics and as part of LA Original’s product line. To accommodate this plethora of mediums, the font is scalable, web and print friendly, and ranges in weight. The typeface has smoothed curves and rounded edges, giving the logo a contemporary feel. Moreover, the caliber of LA local talent featured in the campaign and within the logo design reflects the diverse and outstanding creative community within the city. Notably, Kendrick Lamar stands as the embodiment of the campaign’s spirit: a Los Angeles native son who continues to give back to his community as his own fame and success rise.
Who worked on the project?
Client: Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles Deidre Lind, President of Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles Ashley Jacobs, Director of Brand Los Angeles, Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles Paul Kadzielski, Digital Director - Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, City of Los Angeles Vincent Creer, Brand LA Coordinator, Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles Agency: 72andSunny Matt Murphy, Partner, Executive Creative Director Kelly Schoeffel, Executive Strategy Director Saeid Vahidi, Sr. Strategist Danielle Gard, Brand Director Danielle Rivera, Brand Manager Robert Nakata, Design Director/Founder Peter Reid, Design Director Garrett Jones, Creative Director Peter Hughes, Sr. Writer Andy Lam, Sr. Designer Kwaku Beke, Designer Tyree Harris, Writer Alex Cannon, Designer Ben Hodgin, Creative Director Tom Dunlap, Chief Production Officer Marisa Wasser, Senior Film Producer Juliana Polidor, Film Production Coordinator Rashi Talati, Partnerships Development Director Kallie Halbach, Partnerships & Legal Director Chris Profeta, Partnerships & Legal Manager Kelsey Buehler, Partnership & Legal Coordinator
View the project video: https://youtu.be/eD8iIxfan00
