Afishionados,

One of the reasons that OFAL has been rather quiet these many months is because I’ve been busy putting together designs for a company. Various assignments and projects spread over five classes and two quarters have been taking up most of my free time. I’m happy to say that spring break is finally here, that those projects are, at long last, finished and I’ve decided to share the culmination of my efforts with you.

In a nutshell, the idea was to create a company, come up with a name and slogan, and then design for it. I settled on a nuclear power company for two reasons: 1.) My past experience with nuclear power and 2.) a very interesting article I read in Popular Mechanics. Essentially, new reactor designs use Uranium “pebbles” instead of fuel rods and helium gas as a coolant instead of water. Think of these new reactors like big gum ball machines: once the fuel has been used up, new pebbles are added at the top and the old ones are removed from the bottom. There are many benefits to these new designs, but I have three favorites in particular:

1.) By adding new pebbles to the top and removing old ones from the bottom, there is no need to shut down the reactor for refueling (a time-consuming and lengthy process).

2.) Using helium instead of water as a coolant means any leaks cannot be radioactive (Leaks are certainly not common by any means, but if a disaster were to occur, this is a tremendous safety benefit).

3.) The same helium gas used to cool the reactor could be used to spin a turbine to produce electricity, hydrogen, or desalinate water.

Based on this information, I called the company Ingenuiti and gave it the slogan The Power to Be. Here is what the final logo looks like:

As with any good logo, there are references to what the company stands for (the Fed Ex logo’s hidden arrow, the A to Z in the Amazon.com logo, etc.). Since the reactors use round pebbles, I wanted the logo to be round. The big “U” in the center represents three things. Uranium (which is the fuel), the reactor core itself, and “you” the customer. The three small circles are representative of the Uranium fuel pebbles. As for the text itself, the Ns of the Ingenuiti font were modified to look more like energy bolts since electricity is what the company is producing. The colors are eco-friendly and a glassy look was applied to give it a futuristic appeal.

From there, the logo was applied to stationery. I made a letterhead, business card, and mailing envelope.

click for full size 8.5″ x 11″

The business card has a sleeve and matches the look of the letterhead.

click for full size 8.5″ wide

A series of pictograms also had to be developed in the style of the logo. These pictograms would be used for signage and way-finding.

The pictograms used in the signage.

In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, larger signs were designed to use LED displays and be updated wirelessly with custom CPUs (Apple, of course!). These signs are enclosed in metal enclosures and could be used indoors and outside.

Here is a more technical drawing of how the sign operates.

Security badges would be necessary at a nuclear power plant, and I think I was the only one to design them for my company. Here is the final concept of the ID badge. They are loosely based on military IDs and include a magnetic strip to store funds for the on-campus cafeterias, parking garages, etc. They also have barcodes for scanning and security chips to allow for computer terminal access (the badges would be inserted into card readers before the computer would unlock).

Everybody loves swag and freebies. Part of the project included designing giveaway items for the company. I made audio CDs with nature sounds that shipped in wearable cases. For this item, an actual mockup was constructed.

Corporate uniforms and working uniforms were made. Polo shirts for more casual places in the company, and dress shirts and ties for corporate offices. Coveralls for work in the plant, including designs for security and medical personnel. Traditional workers wear the white helmets while those in supervisory positions wear gold. Security helmets are blue and medical helmets have the same first aid symbol to match.

Vehicles are important to any company. I found most of my classmates used Volkswagen New Beetles or Mini Coopers. While those are nice cars, I didn’t want to use the same thing. In order to be different, and to further push the eco-friendly image of the company, I chose to use Segways and Smart Cars. The Segway has two removable cases on each side for transporting goods across the Ingenuiti campuses.

The Smart (Four-Two model) was done up in three styles. A security version for patrolling the campus, a convertible company car, and a hardtop company car. The company versions were designed to match the look of the Segway.

My classmates never took their cars from Illustrator vector images to realistic renderings. Here is what a real Ingenuiti Smart car would look like.

Click for a larger view

The final project was to put everything that I designed into a book. Every company has a manual for designers that explains how to design for their company. Everything from colors to fonts to signs to usage is included. And all this had to be included within the book. Here is a photo of the final book. I haven’t gotten the original back yet, so unfortunately this is the only photo that I have of the finished piece. The cover was a cropped version of the logo and the cover closed with velcro. The velcro was white and round and the logo was adjusted so that the size of the spheres within it were the same size as the velcro (to help hide it and make it seamless).

The book did not turn out perfect, but I I am very happy with it (and all the designs that went into it). It’s arguably the most in-depth project I’ve done, and was ultimately a success. Now, I’ve just got to go back and work out a couple kinks and make it as close to perfect as I can The fun never ends!

Tags: College, Graphic Design, Ingenuiti, nuclear power, reactor

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Books, College, Graphic Design, Photos, Plugs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.