Innovatielabs (Innovationlabs) is an open call to foster innovative ideas and collaborations within the cultural and creative sector. A project by the Creative Industries Fund – on behalf of all Dutch Culture Funds – and CLICKNL, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
Our challenge
Our brief was to develop the identity for Innovatielabs with an introduction campaign. As part of the campaign, we made an open call launch page, a general website with a community platform and different means – from the open call to communication for the makers and their ideas. But how do you add imagery to abstract ideas? And how can these images grow alongside the projects and represent the cross-disciplinary collaborations?
Our solution
To do this, we designed 16 abstract yet recognisable, animated characters that each represented a different discipline: architecture, dance, film and fashion looking at characteristics from the discipline to determine the behaviour of the animated character. I.e. making the architecture shape heavy and more chunky while the dance shape is a lighter ribbon. The way the shapes interact with each other, meeting, overlapping, colliding or otherwise communicating, represent the cross-disciplinary collaborations between participants and projects. The lively shapes were used as imagery for the communication about the ideas that were fostered through the open call.
On the community platform part of the website, which is accessible through login, participants could contact and help each other and follow each others’ research progress.
Impact
All expectations were exceeded when 174 projects were submitted to the first open call! 16 of those were selected to start their research and were introduced to each other at an event. After the success of the first open call, InnovatieLabs had the opportunity to grow and make the second open call even more impactful. The applications showed that the call reached diverse parties, from makers’ collectives to interdisciplinary partnerships that wanted to work together on challenges in the cultural and creative sector. The results will be shown at the Dutch Design Week 2023 and 2024.
