Creative Direction
Central Saint Martin's Showcase
Translating complexity and chaos into visual coherence.
As Communications and Creative Lead, I guided the development of Emergence – the final showcase for Central Saint Martins' Master’s in Innovation Management. Tasked with making the abstract tangible, we crafted a bold visual identity and communication system that embraced ambiguity while delivering coherence. The resulting showcase turned complexity into connection, inviting visitors into a layered, systemic experience of innovation in action.
The Challenge
Directing a team of 10 amongst a 60 person cohort, my responsibility was to create, plan, and deliver a strategic brand vision for our final showcase. Considering the complex and often ambiguous nature of the innovation management field, aligning on creative concepts that felt true to the field and our cohort was no small feat. My leadership role proved critical to the quality of our showcase, ensuring there was a unified, coherent, and engaging identity – one that both familiar and unfamiliar audiences could connect to and find meaning in.
The Approach
1. Workshop with the wider cohort on concepts, keywords and themes around innovation management to inform creative ideation
2. Map the workshopping outcomes and develop three visual concepts that brought the thematic groupings to life.
3. Present and align on concepts to push forward – a combination of all three themes, diving into their intersections.
4. Design and develop a brand and visual system reflecting a finalized vision, including comprehensive brand guidelines.
The Process
My role was to push my team to reach their creative and strategic potential, and land on a brand identity that felt rich and complex, mirroring the degree's contents. The showcase would work as a system – The Space (the exhibition), The Conversations (the symposium series) and The Stories (the publication) – each contributing to creative ideas meeting, colliding and transforming. From there, we crafted templates and guidelines to be dispersed across teams for their unique use – social media assets, print materials, publication layouts, exhibition signage & wayfinding, and more.
Our logo exemplified how the showcase would work as a system, consisting of three icons, each representing key programming during the showcase.
Select slides from Emergence: The Showcase blueprint – comprehensive brand and visual identity guidelines, and the rationale behind these decisions.
The Outputs
