Looking Outwards 09: A Focus on Women and Non-binary Practitioners in Computational Art 

Title: REAL/RAW/FAST Identity System
Artist: adidas x FIELD.IO
(Commissioned by: adidas Global Brand Design, Generative System Design: FIELD.IO, Motion & Identity Design: DIA, Media Asset Production: Stink, Creative Lead: Fleur Isbell, Xander Marritt, Lead Developer: Bruno Imbrizi Developer: Seph Li, Riccardo Cambiassi, Samuel Honigstein, Documentation: Kosuke, Chris Dumon, Executive Creative Direction: Marcus Wendt, Creative Director: Mile Hughes, Motion Design: Julien Bauzin, Producer: Alice Shaughnessy, Motion Design: Xavier Boivin, Strategy + Consulting: Vera-Maria Glahn)

The project I’ve chosen to discuss is the REAL/RAW/FAST Identity System designed by FIELD.IO (in collaboration with DIA) for sportwear brand adidas. According to the project description, the REAL/RAW/FAST Identity System is the “new face of adidas flagship stores: A Generative Identity System for Retail Screens – bespoke, dynamic, scalable.” Essentially, the system pulls from a pool of kinetic typefaces, procedural animations and local elements that move and change compositions on a series of screens in real time, to create a visual storefront with a bold and unique brand identity. One thing I admire is how it can be adapted from “a plug-and-play rollout to a bespoke flagship version, the Generative System provides solutions for any scale and use case”. The encoded flexibility of the system allows it to be adapted to different campaigns, regardless of content, and to different storefronts, regardless of scale/ screen arrangement. By designing a system, the same elements within a single campaign can be reconfigured and remixed to remain fresh and engaging to the consumer’s eyes. Not only is this project aesthetically simple and clean, the compositions generated and the transitions between such compositions feel seamless, effortless and very satisfying. For me, it is the perfect example of how systems design can integrate digital art into marketing without feeling awkward or clumsy like most digital art campaigns tend to, but also how basic coding and illustration skills can be leveraged to serve a large scale, lucrative project.

Of the members of the team that worked on the REAL/RAW/FAST Identity System, the creator I’ve decided to focus on is Vera-Maria Glahn. She is the managing director for FIELD.io, a digital art studio based in London, UK.
She completed her undergraduate education in Arbitur, Arts, German, English and Philosophy at the Gymnasium Theodorianum in 2003, going on to receive a Masters in Art in Visual Communication with Distinction from the Kinsthochschule Kassel (School of Arts & Design in Kassel) in 2009. She started her career in the media arts industry in 2003 as a producer and curator, notably for the Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival in Germany and the V2_Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She co-founded FIELD.io with Creative Director Marcus Wendt in 2009 following her postgraduate studies and currently manages and produces independent and commissioned digital art for various brand and cultural institutions around the world. I’ve chosen to focus on Vera-Maria because as a co-founder of FIELD.io, her ethics and approach to computational art is reflected in the brand’s direction, allowing me to discuss the brand’s values as a whole. Some of the brand’s core tenants include:

• Imagination (new forms of brand experience, storytelling, creative expression)
• Innovation (developing new forms of interaction, products and services)
• Technology (deep engagement + understanding for technically rich content)
• Relationships (establishing deep + long term connections with brands + people)
  In particular, I really like how the brand (and likely due to Vera-Maria’s founding vision) have positioned themselves as pioneers of digital art and design strategies for major brands, and how everything – from their website UI to their projects to their team portraits on the website – serve to reinforce this vision.

Links:
https://field.systems/work/real-raw-fast-identity-system
https://2016.motionawards.com/judge/vera-maria-glahn/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/veraglahn/?originalSubdomain=de
https://expandedanimation.com/speaker/vera-maria-glahn/