Finding creativity
Lessons in curating art and design for traditional institutions, emphasizing the importance of design briefs that build on your values and directing creativity through collaboration.
Here is our complete gallery of artwork that we have produced, commissioned, and collaborated on over the last few years on visualizing complexity, hope, exploration, failure, and successes.
Why creativity matters
UNHCR’s Innovation Service has had an emphasis on visual communication whether it was trying to create a separate team logo (didn’t work out that well) or being deliberate with the selection of photographs accompanying articles. Communication is valued as essential to our work on humanitarian innovation and the team has consistently invested in understanding communicating with intention to influence and strengthen the innovation culture in UNHCR. We’ve attempted to highlight the importance of moving behaviours and mindsets through communication rather than focusing on clicks, views or shares.
The work we are trying to communicate is complex and we need to treat every aspect of communication with care — including the visual elements that accompany or sometimes lead our stories. Today, we have built a visual language catalogue that is wide, deep and at times fragmented and scattered, demonstrating that the work we do is at times without clear direction, and at times so focused we reach and deliver goals beyond our standard expectations.
For the Innovation Service, visual communication serves two realms, and sometimes these two merge, because hey, we live in a continuum and everything is nuanced, right? The first realm is to illustrate, lead, and accompany a story that we want to tell on the complex nature of innovation. The second realm is to describe and demonstrate complexity visually, be it a diagram or an image — what we ultimately try to do is to build curiosity around innovation and build (flexible and strong) suspension bridges for collaboration.
From an innovation point of view, visual communication, or the visualization of challenges and solutions, are key to describe and demonstrate complexity, a state of mind and world we are living in. If your tool is Excel, it is difficult in that tool to describe a non-linear process, for example. Yet, we do this all the time: applying inadequate tools and methodologies to the challenges we are facing.
Tools are important. As we swim in the ocean of plastic waste that is visual imagery in media, there are tools that standardize the visual language, from web-based animation tools to PowerPoint or Keynote. Whilst we support standardization of promising practices and explorations into ways to democratizate access to innovation tools — in artwork that we commission we have tried to move to the opposite direction, into investing in commissioning unique artwork, focusing on craftsmanship, and design briefs.
Design briefs normally tend to focus on output, and the deliverables, rather than the process and the context of the work, sometimes leaving little space for creativity. We tried to be mindful of this, and lean on the process, providing a detailed expression of the context and the challenge, rather than the expected output. The Innovation Service has taken a conscious effort to step away from the spreadsheet mentality that requires everything to be measured so that we could experience and appreciate the non-measurable aspects of innovation and culture change within the organization.
The most wordy bit of the artwork
Where we start the design process
Innovation is context-based — and for humanitarian innovation to make a difference it needs to be inclusive and based on values that promote human rights and the diverse paths that drive humanity forward. Design briefs that are not context-based, and are not based on the core values of our mission, risk contributing to a field of visual communication that stereotypes and undermines the very world we are trying to build — a world where innovation enables displaced people being welcomed and viewed as core members of society, and not as ‘others’.
From where we sit as content producers and innovation officers, the least exciting part of collaborating and commissioning artwork is probably the process of defining the needs in the design brief, and the most exciting bit when the first draft of artwork is shared for feedback and review — how the brief is shaped and discussed however can have an enormous impact on the outcome of the commissioned work, and the nature of the collaboration ahead. The design brief sets the tone for all parties involved on what will change after we have received the final work.
Behind the scenes, the privileged view with access to only a few
Early stages in the design process
In innovation, and in our Service, we often discuss the importance of the innovation process. Trust it, follow it, shape it, and change it. In commissioning and collaborating with art and design work, those who work closely with the artists like Ailadi — our beloved illustrator, have the privilege to peek into the artists’ world, their creative process, their thinking, and their methodologies before it comes to the public view. This privileged access is a satisfying process as it reminds us that creativity indeed is something that everyone can be involved in, and works best when it’s collaborative. Sometimes it is good to go straight to the truest forms of creative work to remind us that creativity can be applied everywhere in our work.
Bringing creative work into our innovation process at the UN
Where we start to learn and disseminate
After experiencing the creative process of designers and artists, and after having experienced different creative processes that feed into the work of innovation, we can start to see the bits and pieces that can help us manage innovation. These are two short learnings we think are important, and where visual communication work has changed the way we approach innovation:
- Visual elements are influencing how we design processes — sometimes what we imagine or experience cannot be described only with words. For example, a custom developed and designed diagram depicts a situation of people in transit to Europe in a different way than a written paragraph, or a standard bar chart can.
- Instead of only using photography as means to carry or accompany a story, with illustrations and more abstract artwork, we are able to direct creativity in a way that elicits imagination and underlines the complexity of the subject, and of the world we try to improve.
Procurement is the deal
Going back to the very beginning
The UN, as a system, is not geared towards procuring creative talents such as artists and designers. This is probably no surprise and highlights that behind every creative work we have put out for public consumption, multiple people in different capacities and roles have been working to make it happen.
Our artists do the hard work of trying to understand us, trying to understand the underlying story in the design brief, and — with strict timeframes and only a few amendment rounds – work to produce something valuable and new. Providing that space for creativity to exist, and curating the direction and the final output, is rarely a moment for individual geniuses (like many might think): it is the work of a team with both assigned and non-assigned creative roles and capacities.
Moving images, to other dimensions
Moving forward in building curiosity
Recently we have been exploring the benefits of moving images (images that move, not moving them from A to B), from short “explainer” animations to GIFs (pronunciation currently under debate in our team). And as we explore some of the benefits of more dynamic content, we have realized the power and versatility of still images, and the importance of creative direction and character development in those dynamic images.
In an almost year-long project to depict the journey of innovation from a UNHCR Innovation Fellow’s point of view, almost 50% of the time with the illustrator and animator Russell Abrahams, were discussions and deliberations around race, inclusion, diversity, gender, ableism, and how we as content producers are responsible for bringing our values to the centre when creating characters in videos who are supposed to represent the people who are innovating.
Despite complexity, there is space to use humour and emotions. With the recent 3D artwork we wanted to create a new world with familiar objects and characters who used, applied, and acted in this new world in a way that elicited positive emotions of unity and common goals. There’s more to come on this front. Meanwhile you can visit our ever growing Bēhance to see more work by Jungmin Ryu, our go-to 3D illustrator/designer.
Not to forget
We occasionally commission photographs, film, and edit videos and we do not want to forget the plethora of methods and formats available for us to communicate our values. But as Babusi Nyoni, a UI/UX designer who has collaborated with us on designing our online presence, says, [paraphrasing] we want to make the format we are working in work as hard as possible — meaning whatever we engage in, we should maximise its potential, and take a craftsmanship approach (like Dina — who leads the Innovation Service’s operations work and Fund — often says) to the work we engage in. As artists work on their art, a big part of the work, as mentioned comes in the form of procurement, but on the other end we have UI/UX and publication design and production. The world of our in-house printshop and the work of web development may be in the background (at least in this article) but should be recognized as co-drivers (not annoying backseat drivers) who through their creative processes, bring the larger creative circle to a close.
Focusing in on a few formats that work for us is important, and exploring those formats to their fullest potential, is even more important. It might be easier to get into the habit of valuing clicks and views and shares, because that would be easier if we want instant gratification, for sure — but for us those metrics (or feelings) do not mean much. What matters to us is how and with whom we explore the complexities of innovation in the context of forced displacement, however in the margins we might be in at the moment.
