An Impact Identity for scaling-up the digital capability of UK industry
Interact is a newly funded initiative through UKRI, making an important contribution to how the UK realises its ambition to become a global leader in industrial digitalisation by 2030.
Many of the barriers to digital innovation in manufacturing are not actually technological, but economic and behavioural. Social science, with its focus on human behaviour, has much to contribute to help industry overcome these challenges. Yet many social scientists are unaware of the opportunities manufacturing provides as a platform for their expertise.
As a social science-led initiative within the UK government’s wider Made Smarter manufacturing challenge fund, Interact aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry, commissioning fresh research and fostering greater collaboration.
Interact: Pioneering Human Insight for Industry
Firehaus worked in close partnership with the Interact and UKRI teams to devise a brand identity for the project - one which tied in with the parent Made Smarter brand, but also conveyed its distinct social science remit.
Having devised a name which reflected its collaborative, interdisciplinary and action-oriented agenda, we then created a simple two-tone colour treatment and visual device which emphasised the human focus of Interact’s work and the T-shaped thinking so critical to its success. The strapline - ‘Pioneering human insight for industry’ - expressed the ground-breaking nature of research being commissioned, intended to appeal to social scientists driven to want to make an impact.
“Firehaus were great to work with. They explained everything and discussed our choices. They listened to our multiple stakeholders and were very flexible. We ended up with something we are delighted with – but would never have been able to do ourselves!”
Professor Jill MacBryde, Director of Interact
Interact branded content series: Insights from History
With the Interact brand off to a confident start, we were invited to support a research team commissioned by Interact to explore what today’s manufacturing innovators can learn from the way industrial technologies have been adopted in the past. Dr Ahmad Beltagui and Dr Brian Sudlow of Aston University wanted to ensure the learnings from their secondary literature review work could have greater impact by being brought to life for a non-academic audience in an engaging and accessible way through storytelling.
Firehaus devised the name and framework for an ‘Insights from History’ content series, producing a gateway film to introduce the series, and then scripting and animating the first piece of content - showing how a seemingly small scale industrial innovation like a mining lamp had a transformative impact on safety and productivity.
“Firehaus were excellent. They kept up a good dialogue with us while working towards the right scripts for our films, supporting us through filming itself.”
Dr Brian Sudlow, Lecturer in History, Aston University