Seeing an opportunity for higher quality student accommodation, Future Generation approached us for branding their new venture. “We’re putting football pitches on their rooftops and cinemas in their basements. This isn’t student living, it’s just living!”.

First realising that these students were being patronised by existing providers and that they’re actually the most sophisticated digital natives in the world, we set about treating them as such and creating something truly progressive. This was a brand who wanted to truly bring a new approach to the market and rethink what student accommodation is.

Opening the project with a team trip to the Tate, specifically to see Rachel Whitereads exhibition on negative space castings, we considered our client’s core belief. It was clear we needed to rethink what space is. Space, afterall, is what you make of it. The approach of taking a new view to the industry, as well as putting space at the heart of the design, resulted in a brand mechanism of ‘perspectives’. Owning such a flexible mechanism quickly unveiled a wide range of exciting opportunities in how tasks could be solved through unexpected ways.

Beginning with a simple execution of a 3D logo which aligned only when face on, it soon grew to bespokely coded 3D transition, hidden interactions and parallax motions which sought to act as windows into new locations. Each digital touchpoint was created to emphasise a sense of physicality and your view into it.

Building content around their various accommodation location pages made us realise that we couldn’t write this ourselves or compile it from online reviews. Instead we contacted local students for their first hand insights into the best places to eat, drink, meet people and more. Keeping perspective in mind shifted these location pages from product orientated listings to personal guides on your new home-town, so you felt like you fit in before you even arrived.

Developing the brand’s content we pitched and shot a hero campaign around capturing the entire three year life of a student in a minute; taking such a new view to videography unlike any other in the market. The business cards saw transparent gloss statements printed on black cards which were only visible when seen at a certain perspective, forcing you to take a new and involved view to the design.

Continuing to bring the branding to life, we collaborated with architects and interior designers WeAre74. Reviewing plans, fixtures and furniture, we developed previously unseen concepts of braille for lesser sighted people, three tiers of wayfinding based on different tennent requirements, iconography lead signage for foreign students, focal lighting installations to draw attention to key areas of the building, and typographic feature perspective paintings which strengthened our tone of voice, wayfinding and made each space unique for the abstracted shapes painted on the walls. All of this came together for truly considered spatial design.

Overall, each medium and task accentuated Future Generation’s core ethos of wanting to bring a new view to the industry under a unified theme. Perspective, because we believe that space is what you make of it.