How a glass of water made sure it all happened
This is about Shift’s visual representation, not a philosophical depiction of the sinuous path that led us to where we are. Lest I forget it.
Creativity is a lie, I always tell myself. We must limit ourselves in order to explore different views on certain ideas, and only then can we actually create.
“Responsive and simple.” Those were the first words that began conditioning our proposals. July was almost over when we started working, and so our minds were clear. You know (we students all do), the first weeks of your summer. The constant hustle of your classes, waking up early, not getting enough sleep, all of that was gone for a while. But in the back of our heads, this slight feeling that for some reason it’d be back soon kept coming up. Why?
Could it have something to do with this project? Could it be that our subconscious was telling us something we didn’t know? Yup..! Shift APPens is the best representation of that constant and energetic hustle. 48 hours to imagine, develop and push an idea, getting little to no sleep, with — you guessed it — shit always happening around you.
And so another constraint was born. Movement had to be present in Shift’s brand. We needed a shift, a change, and what better way to achieve that than with crazy simple rotations?
Alright, we had enough to start creating. The next step was to understand where to stop before we’d lost all sense of direction, where to cut the rope before all that had been created prior to our intervention, Shift’s heritage, was broken. We talked about what Shift was, whether we could remove this and add that, what really needed to stay. We came up with the idea of following some of the coolest design trends of the year, using gradients and contrasting font weights and sizes. Every hour spent working on the project felt more and more like we were getting closer and closer to the collective goal, to reach the next best image for Shift, but also to a very personal (though also collective) goal, which was to feel as if everyone on the team was a team member. We for sure do.
It’s been incredible working with everyone. jeKnowledge and NEI have been partners for years, but we’ve had challenges. And we know that when the time comes for the event to happen, more will follow. But so far we’re doing great, and it’s been quite the experience.
Right about now you should be asking yourself where the glass of water comes in. Though it’s more like a “where it went in”, and the answer is inside my computer during last years’ Shift APPens. It’s a bit of a random thought, but I highly doubt that without this ever having happened, I never would have felt the need to express the unimaginably dynamic and tireless existence of every past (and for sure the ones to follow) edition of Shift.
