Emirates Pavilion – Dubai World Expo 2020 Brand

In partnership with Creative Technology London, we worked to bring Emirates’ vision of sustainability and innovation to life across all touchpoints – from the overarching user journey and a range of screen content, to wayfinding and ticketing. Our brand toolkit acted as an essential red thread, tying the installations together, whilst providing consistency and cohesion throughout the pavilion. Type, animation, iconography, UI, UX, colour theory and sound were all carefully considered as individual components, laddering up to reinforce the core principles of the project.

On arrival, a huge kinetic sculpture presented each visitor with their own personal sphere, embedded with an RFID tag. Paired with a digital twin, this physical ‘seed’ served as their guide and curator, activating each of the installations in turn, whilst also gathering data on their interactions and choices along the way. Meanwhile, our motion and behavioural principles were informed by deep research into aeronautical design and the sleek architecture of the building itself, with a series of undulating, three-dimensional fins forming one of the foundational cornerstones of our system, augmented with a futuristic typeface and sleek, intuitive UI.

Hardware, software, workflows and design approach all required careful consideration, to ensure successful delivery of content and UI in multiple languages. Adaptation comprised a blend of translation and transcreation into Modern Arabic via text and voice – and we developed a wholly bespoke pipeline for dynamic text that was generated in Unreal Engine. Meanwhile, every aspect of the brand was subjected to rigorous, iterative testing to ensure legibility and accessibility in all contexts and conditions.