tothepoint

Catapult Brand Overview

Helping Transport Systems Catapult convey the importance of intelligent mobility to the economic 
growth of the UK. Creating a set of tools for Satellite Catapult, used in workshops to test the robustness of a company’s product.

The brief

Catapult is a government-led initiative which comprises of seven elite technology centres established and overseen by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK. We have worked with two of these centres, the first being Transport Systems Catapult since 2014. 

The first task was to name, brand and create the workspace environment graphics for their Innovation centre based in Milton Keynes. The other was for Satellite Applications Catapult, where we were tasked with creating materials to facilitate workshop sessions to help determine whether a new product or concept was robust enough to bring to market.

The creative idea

For both of these projects, it was essential that our solutions reflected the innovation and inventiveness that the Catapult network represents. It was also important that they could see tangible results from the investment they had made in the solutions we provided. 

By creating a bold ‘IM’ campaign, we significantly raised awareness of ‘intelligent mobility’ to the travel systems sector. Similarly, by creating a unique toolkit pack for ‘Satellite Applications’, we encouraged audience participation at key stages of a concepts development, which we called ‘Discover, define, develop and deliver’.

Disciplines

Branding
Creative campaign
Editorial
Large format graphics

Our IM brand campaign brought the topic of Intelligent Mobility to the fore of the Transport Systems Catapult and highlighted its future importance, encouraging debate and inspiring people to get involved.

IM cards

Other materials include a set of cards named the Insight Toolkit. Each card explores one of 21 themes within Intelligent Mobility, such as how it can help the elderly or make people happier on their daily commute. An A5 booklet that explains the current projects and market value of Intelligent Mobility, folds out to create an A1 poster featuring the IM graphic used in the Imovation Centre.

The Satellite Applications Catapult

The Satellite Applications Catapult is an independent innovation and technology company, created to foster growth across the economy through the exploitation of space. They help organisations make use of and benefit from satellite technologies, and bring together multi-disciplinary teams to generate ideas and solutions in an open innovation environment.

In order to facilitate the process of working in partnership with organisations who have a new concept or idea they want to bring to market, they created ‘The Business Design Sprint’ which are a series of sessions that test a product’s robustness. These sessions are held with company founders, directors, or product owners, to help develop their business ideas into more robust and validated business propositions.

Catapult Scrible

The materials needed to convey the four key stages of the products life-cycle, which were identified as Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. We created an icon for each which were used extensively throughout the materials and helped signpost the stages.

We created ‘The Business Design Sprint Toolkit’, a physical pack which comprised of an A4 Introduction Guide, A3 Canvas sheets and A6 Method Cards which are all now being used by Satellite Applications Catapult as part of their business support programme.

“We approached tothepoint with an idea of creating a toolkit to make our processes more accessible to a wider audience, but without knowing the form it would take. Through discussion and development, they helped us explore a number of different well-thought out ways we could present our methodology and materials. They were dedicated, attentive and were genuinely passionate about the project. It didn’t feel like they were just creating something for us, it felt like we were creating something together.”

Joel Freedman, Head of User Centred Design, Catapult Satellite Applications