Innovate UK

Innovate UK provides support and funding to organisations developing new products and services.

We work continuously with multiple marketing managers across different projects, initiatives, and campaigns within Innovate UK.

With the fast-paced nature of innovation and science, Innovate UK often finds it difficult to describe, capture, and explain everything they do. We have had the privilege of designing organisation-wide explainers directly for the CEO, thereby helping Innovate UK to elevate their progressive, innovative support and investment.

58
Brochure's created: 185
Exhibition stands designed

Design

Large scale exhibition work is a regular on our books, but most of our work with IUK comes in the form of brochures and white papers - usually academic, often fascinating, and almost always including charts, diagrams, and infographics.

We pride ourselves on presenting complex information in easy to understand graphics. This is particularly important for impact reports, which need to detail key funding and investment alongside project outcomes, innovative developments, and progress. We partner with copywriters, where required, to support IUK in putting together a quality report.

We are sometimes asked to push the brand and create something to stand out. In the case of the Innovate UK explainer brochure, the CEO requested a “bold and dynamic” look. So we amped up colours from the extended brand palette and mixed up the shapes used throughout the layouts to achieve this within the guidelines.

As a government-funded organisation, Innovate UK is digital-first. We’re regularly on hand to suggest the best way of presenting information digitally, whether through simple webpages or a digital / mobile brochure or something more complex. Many of our projects with Innovate UK balance cost and environmental concerns with impact and audience. We uphold and share a number of values with Innovate UK (including accessibility), and are always conscious of a need for transparency around investments, advancements, and nationwide impact.

Expanding time

We get it. After a team has spent years researching and developing and innovating, that roundup report has understandably been pushed into a faraway calendar reminder. When the dreaded notification drops, we’re usually on the receiving end of those ‘help us’ calls, and, frankly, this is where our team shine.

Our process is streamlined in such a way that we can begin working on an IUK report with little to no content!

A set of templates, created and kept up to date by our designer, Tash, are always ready to go in the IUK style with all the assets a designer may need. Any of our designers have the skills and experience to pick up an IUK project at any point in the process.

Why stop at one designer? Our love of collaborative working means we can involve multiple designers at the same time. We recently had only two hours to turn around a set of major amends, and we achieved this by dividing the 60-page brochure between two designers working from front to back and vice versa. We have really practised this level of collaborative working and are able to tie up any continuity issues through good communication.

Project-specific timelines have been invaluable. Suzi, our PM on IUK projects, takes into account realistic turnaround times for design and feedback, plus holidays and scheduling conflicts for both our team and theirs.

Planned, streamlined, and collaborative working really does have the effect of expanding time on some of these projects that require an extremely fast delivery.

Some projects and initiatives within IUK have their own brand, logo, set of assets, or rules to follow. And these will often need to sit alongside the main IUK brand itself. We are adept at picking up new brand guidelines, and our experience with the IUK brand ensures that we find an appropriate way to honour both the project and the wider organisation.

Our work with the Healthy Ageing Challenge (an initiative researching and funding innovations around the UK’s ageing population) uses different colours and assets to IUK, but still needs to look like a related project. Whereas projects like Women In Innovation and one-off exhibitions stands only feature the IUK logo and have their own distinct look and feel.

In 2022, we designed 43 exhibition stands for IUK’s Materials Research Exchange event in London. This required our team to gather content and brand styling for these 43 exhibitors. Our key aim throughout this project was to ensure each exhibition stand felt individual and celebrated each organisation’s brand. Despite the insane time constraint (3 weeks from nothing to 43 stands!), we didn’t want designs to feel ‘samey’ or for anyone to get any hint that one small team of creatives had designed the lot. Our other key aim was, of course, to deliver all of these stands in record time for the event!

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“Thanks again to you and your team for your help on the projects this week. We really appreciate your work and it hasn't gone unnoticed how you always go the extra mile. Once again, you and the team have smashed it out the park. You're a fantastic agency.”

Megan, Innovate UK Business Connect

Impact

Since arriving on Innovate UK’s books in 2022, we have learned about the work they do and the far-reaching impact their projects have. Partnering with IUK for the long term has allowed us to become a trusted partner for their marketing managers, helping them problem-solve within environmental or accessibility constraints, and find the best solutions to help their work shine.

We honestly love to be the ones IUK turn to in moments of need. Our team thrives under pressure because we have the tools and know-how to plan, collaborate, and deliver on complex, high profile, or fast turnaround projects.

Innovate UK continues to support and progress innovation across the nation, and we love to help them shout about it.