Creative Capacity Lab
Delivering physical and digital materials with a workshop look-&-feel for a research lab catering design practices to individuals, teams and institutions.
As the Visual Design & Research Student Associate, I was tasked with creating the identity through logo design, workshop materials and brand image + assets. The requirement: look-&-feel should be tangible and rough, like in a group brainstorming session at the workshop. The results were developed by the team, with emphasis on note-making, tools and collaboration.
In the span of a two-week period of intense research, synthesis and system-creation, my teammates and I created an identity system to navigate through digital interfaces and printed workshop material for the Creative Capacity Labs. This lab is housed at the University of Texas at Austin and collaborates closely with teams to support real-world projects through guided design practice.
Opportunity
Creative Capacity Lab is a research and practice initiative at the Design department at the University of Texas at Austin. Their mission highlights bringing the practice of design to individuals and teams, as a resource to solve problems and generate insight. Previously, they conducted a single workshop that produced tangible artefacts in the form of booklets and material. Our task, as a graphic, product and copy writer associates, involved bringing the vision for Creative Capacity Lab to life, and to create clear deliverables that allowed for a non-designer to facilitate such an experience for themselves or their teams.
How do we create a functional system of physical and digital resource templates for prospective future workshops, such that the comprehension and facilitation of the process is not dependent on prior design knowledge?
Research
Our rigorously quick research process began with visualizing, through a brainstorm session, what the identity of Creative Capacity Labs should consist of. It was important to establish this initially, as we could chart an experience that resonated with an audience that wasn’t native to the design process. We unanimously landed on elements like rough handwriting, color and marks as an ode to scrambled material on the table during brainstorming sessions, and to commemorate the joy in collaborating and creating together.
We then moved to Journey Mapping the process of a workshop. This was essential for us as associates to understand the flow of events, but also to generate a template for a system that could be replicated with other workshops in the future.
There are essentially 9 sections to the process (can be altered based on workshop requirements), and the ‘loop’ graphic establishes the continuity through all the stages. Starting with ‘All Hands & Workshop 1’ the loop alternates between interactive sections (workshops) of the process to homework (prototype) before the next interactive session and so on.
Solution
Our solution involved a three-fold approach: a digital product in the form of a website, language and structure of content for workshops and communication, and graphics for visual identity through physical and digital material alike. As the graphic designer on the team, I focused on creating a primary and secondary logo, brand assets and marks, illustrations and layout design for tangible material.
In order to touch on our initial vision of the brand, I found the most authentic form of expression through exploring hand-drawn artefacts. Starting with the logo, I experimented with different tools, brushes and pressure variability to construct a cohesive logo that translated well between physical and digital artefacts, and stood the test of scale. The result was a smooth-but-rough, flexible-yet-sturdy and dynamic logo that stemmed from my handwriting! The secondary logo inquired into lockups, and further expansion of systems.
Prototype + Result
Working with the copy writer and product designer to bring these graphics to life proved to be the turning point of this project. The layout design for the workshop booklets depended on the content framework, and the visual flow to the website on the UI/UX elements and type treatment. In a collaborative effort, we worked simultaneously on all three elements with multiple quick iterations and developing versions that replaced its predecessor.
Many critique sessions, with constant reviews and suggestions, fueled the working dynamic of the team. Our prototypes ranged from physical printouts, to digital figma prototypes and even sketched out frameworks.
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