MAKE’s generative identity for LCC’s 2023 postgraduate show gives the power back to the students

For MAKE’s Co-founders Mariona Ortiz and Kenzo Mayama, working on the identity for London College of Communication’s (LCC) 2023 postgrad show was akin to coming full circle. The duo had first met on the LCC campus, as students of the MA graphic design course in 2009. To deliver the identity for the show, they were able to pull inspiration from a deep well of memories. As they brainstormed, the winding, circuitous nature of college life – something they were deeply familiar with – seemed like an interesting conceptual starting point. “Our idea was to visualise the creative paths most students go through in their MA journeys, which is a more of a zigzag route rather than a straight line,” Ortiz tells us. The show’s theme of ‘focus’ provided further inspiration, translated graphically into a suite of circles and ovals, twisting and turning around each other. “We added a volumetric treatment to the initial zigzag lines, which resulted in a 3D sculpture that’s always moving, and mimics how focus is constantly shifting in a fast-paced digital culture,” she adds. At every point, MAKE puts the students at the heart of the project. Instead of a monolithic identity, they opted for a generative system which allows each student to create a bespoke version of the identity, based on what best suits their body of work. The team collaborated with creative coder Andre Burnier to develop a code-based online tool, which lets students both tweak and own the identity. The overarching design system, though, was built with existing assets from the University of Arts London’s (UAL) primary identity, created by Pentagram.