Nordic University Hub on Industrial IoT, DTU
Branding
www.nordic-iot.org/
Branding
www.nordic-iot.org/
Nordic IoT Hub—The Hub is a “network of excellence” funded by NordForsk for six years and consists of 10 research groups at 5 universities, doing research and innovation related to the Industrial Internet of Things.
How can the Hub increase awareness of IIoT research and facilitate collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and industry in the Nordic countries?
The Hub had a visual identity inherited from DTU’s IoT Research Centre, which “folded” into the Hub, but it was missing a “mission and vision”, and it did not have a toolkit such as a brand manual or more extensive templates. The communication materials did not use the visual identity. For example, their “Hub magazine” did not use the color scheme and typefaces, their regular newsletter had an amateurish layout and did not use the visual identity. The Hub had a poor communication strategy. There’s a lack of a clear target audience, no social media (SoMe) presence, and the communication by the members of the Hub, such as, talks at conferences, events, news pieces, do not use the Hub visuals.
Brand typeface and other
brand elements
brand elements
Consulting the book Let’s Talk Type (Seddon, 2016) with theory about the anatomy of letters and the nuances of various fonts and Basic Advertising (Mahon, 2010) for choosing the typeface for headlines, subheads, and body text, I have decided to change the current Calibri typeface to the more geometric sans-serif, hence more “technical”, typeface of Montserrat.
Campaign
Based on the analysis of the target groups and the services that the Hub has to provide to its members, I proposed to organize a series of “IoT Days” events. These events use the updated brand, are heavily promoted on social media, and gather under a trustworthy venue the most important stakeholders: researchers and students, who present their work and establish contacts, industry players who learn about new innovations, technologies, and engage in matchmaking with researchers, expose their use cases to students and academia, and the policy-makers can be informed about the benefits of IoT in addressing societal challenges, such as the green transition.
