Informing, inspiring, and engaging society with EMBL’s research, services and training
As a publicly funded organisation, EMBL has both a responsibility and an interest to feed back on its work by communicating its innovative research programmes and cutting-edge science, and bringing the questions, concerns and responses of the public to the laboratory.
Whenever I introduce myself as EMBL’s Core Content Manager, I inevitably have to explain what core content is. The short answer is that it’s long-lasting content, that we can use in many ways, including to support the more news-y stories we tell. But what does that mean, exactly?
While working on EMBL’s brand strategy we realised that there is a need for a more systematic way to guide and leverage our collective efforts to build EMBL’s corporate design. So we chose to create a design language system that works across everything we produce, whether in print or digital,…
From press releases about our latest discoveries and recaps of alumni or sponsor events to conference announcements or service updates – EMBL has many stories to tell to a variety of local and global, general interest and expert audiences. The digital channels we’re currently using for this are…
Last week I wrote about how the EMBL Corporate Design Sprint distilled a brand map into a brand structure. Today I’m writing the second installation with a post on how we’re using those core principles as the base for our brand information architecture (hereafter: IA) and a unique tool: the…
[This blog post was penned by the entire team that took part in the first Corporate Design sprint] 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…
A good editorial theme is interesting, memorable and strikes a chord. The aim is to attract and inspire readers to do something. Last, but not least, it should be inspirational and speak to our readers about the one thing they care about — their future. Read more about why we are introducing…
Editorial themes are something that we have used to tie the EMBLetc magazine together in recent editions. Themes spark intrigue, provide focus and allow us to capture great stories from the most unexpected places. We are now planning to expand this concept to inspire stories and other content…
During EMBL’s 43 years it has grown in size, scope and geography. Today EMBL has six sites, many activity areas and focuses on five related but distinct missions. There is a very strong unifying concept at the core of EMBL. However, during those years of growth a solid conceptual view of how…
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. Many…
A lesson re-learned in naming GitHub repos 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…