For a school project, I was tasked with building a design system for an event. I chose to develop a mock award ceremony to honour ologies, a podcast hosted by science correspondent Alie Ward.
From volcanologists, to arborists, to futurologists, Ward asks “-ologists” of all sorts about their professional obsessions. The goal of the unendorsed mock award ceremony was to honour the podcast, its fans, and its past guests by promoting past, present, and future episodes of the show.
The challenge was to develop a system to represent all episodes of the ologies podcast, encompassing a huge swath of topics. This entirely new visual theme aimed to increase listenership, and to gather donations and sponsors for the future longevity of the show. The design system had to be striking, uncomplicated, and appealing to a wide audience.
My work included building visuals for the different categories and promotional materials for the show and campaign (for web-based and social media platforms), designing specialty certificates and medals for the winners, and merchandise for ultra-loyal fans.
I designed a visual story including themes of a tree of knowledge, quilt patterns and modern folk art styles, leaning into the scientific illustration style from the original assets.
I spent time researching the most successful science communication podcasts and shows. I wanted to understand which ones are successful . What audience are they targeting? How complicated is the material? How does the ologies podcast fit into the science podcast ecosystem, and how its brand help it to become the best science communication podcast on streaming platforms today?
After research, I delved into the experience I want to build for this awards show promotion campaign. I want all participants in this campaign to walk away feeling more attached, more loyal, and more love for ologies the podcast.
I developed a moodboard that begins to solve the challenge of encompassing a huge array of topics. I wanted to include the folk art theme so that it could tie into the existing brand, which touches the theme of vintage scientific illustrations. I also wanted to include a "tree of knowledge" to represent the many avenues of knowledge that ologies is discussing.
The tree of knowledge visually encompasses all episode topics, but must further expanded for the design system to function to its full potential. To do this, I sub-divided the almost 300 ologies episodes into six main categories: physics, engineering, animal and plant biology, human biology, anthropology and earth systems. I then developed a symbol for each of these six categories, tying into the tree of knowledge visual, the folk art, and quilting themes. Each episode can be represented with its larger symbol according to its category, but textures related to the episodes can be incorporated into the quilt blocks.
In this stage, I further refined the moodboard including colour and typeface choices. Though distinct from Ologies’ current brand, the visual identity borrows elements from the existing look and feel, so feels cohesive with the brand as a whole.
