Blog

We’ve made a point to blog about key moments during the design process, it’s part of our effort to reflect one of our design principles: Show our work.

The below posts are hosted on the EMBL Strategy and Communications blog, they’re listed here from newest to oldest.

• Selecting a new typeface for EMBL: Fira

  We have been using Helvetica Neue as EMBL’s official typeface for some time now. We wanted to test whether this is the best and most sustainable choice for the organisation moving forward. There are few fonts as iconic as the Helvetica family, but it also comes with baggage. Read more

• Mapping brand structure to support communication

  There is a very strong unifying concept at the core of EMBL. However, during its years of growth a solid conceptual view of how websites, brochures and newsletter relate to each other has not yet been forged and adapted holistically. Read more

• Our Design Principles

  The design sprint that started a couple of weeks ago began with the team describing their visions, their ideas, and thoughts of what a new EMBL corporate design could look and feel like. Central to describing and understanding why something looks the way it does are our design principles. Read more

• Name it for what it does

  As part of the Corporate Design sprint, we had need to set up a GitHub team and repositories to home and share work on the EMBL Design Language and Design Lab (more on what those are in a future post). As an abstract task, it’s easy. Except what to name the team? What to name the repositories? Read more

• CD-Sprint 1: getting excited about the brand

  Our framework for the first week is to focus on the brand map as well as the brand strategy and related initial design principles. We started with a brainstorming session, so called “the first burst”. That implies answering questions like “what do we need”, “what are the blockers”, “what does success look like” and “what are our design principles”, including capturing “governance” and “risks”. Read more

• CD1: on EMBL’s brand

  The word “brand” has become a common word in our daily language, but it is used in different contexts with different meanings. The word has its origin in ranching, when branding marks were seared into an animal’s skin to identify its owner. Television and print advertising saw the word being used more broadly and branding has now come to denote all the features that can distinguish an organisation or product as distinct from its rivals. Read more