IBM Sustainability

Reducing emissions, improving efficiency and adapting to changing conditions are vital priorities in the global race to decarbonise. IBM is creating solutions, but the sector-wide challenge is driving exponential uptake. Ahead of their flagship thought leadership event, ‘Think’, they sought us out to create a captivating experience that would showcase their sustainability suite’s complex capabilities and benefits with powerful simplicity.  

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Elaborating on IBM’s Eye logo, we created a complete graphic language using the dot of the pupil as our building block that was applied throughout, from switches and data dashboards to the architectural forms and landscape.

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IBM’s Maximo and Invizi products enable OEM manufacturers, owners and operators to leverage data to win efficiencies in time, money and emissions. From a deep understanding of the products and their benefits – for businesses and for the world – we knew that rooting the experience in story would be key. We landed on the concept of giving users control of a city’s transport networks. 

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“We had conversations about the joyfulness of playing with train sets. If there was an element of play within it, it could be a fun and engaging way of telling this story about infrastructure,” Nigel Cottier recalls.

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Inspired by Renzo Piano maps found in our research, we built a 3D city model and programmable tabletops that invited the operator to respond to real-world situations, from scheduling maintenance to keep the network moving, to anticipating changing environmental conditions, to identifying opportunities to cut energy use. It captured the imagination – and attention – of attendees, and communicated the products’ multitude of possibilities and benefits.

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To embed sustainability within the project, we designed it to be repurposable and adaptable to other use cases as the products evolve. Currently touring the world, its success has embedded it internally as a benchmark for future IBM activations.