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April 15, 2024
Why Dyson travelled to Enschede specially for these AKI students
Sitting side-by-side, Dorsheila and Finn proudly reflect on the two intensive weeks they spent working on the Dotplot – a home device that allows women to monitor their breasts – and there is really only one word that sums up the entire process: enjoyment. "It was really great to be able to work for Dyson. Above all, the four of us had a lot of fun", says Dorsheila looking back. "Fortunately, Dyson gave us all the freedom we needed during the design process, which made it especially interesting."
Breast cancer awareness
The Dotplot doesn't detect breast cancer, but it does identify changes in the size of the breast that are less easy to feel with your fingers. The product already existed, but it lacked a brand identity. It was up to the students of Crossmedia Design to puzzle over images, the packaging, the colour palettes, the communication and social media. Finn: “Obviously, breast cancer is a heavy subject, so we quickly decided to actually make the branding colourful and playful.” That immediately makes the subject a lot more accessible, not least for young people, believes Dorsheila: “They are less likely to think about breast cancer. With our design, we also wanted to generate awareness."
The winning packaging design
Check em, Dop em
This is the first and so far only time that Dyson has worked with an art academy outside the United Kingdom. “This assignment was a really good fit for us", says Dorsheila. "With things like this, AKI tends to take a rather more unconventional approach and I think we are more likely to step out of our comfort zones than students from the UK. Plus, we received really good supervision from our lecturer, Carsten Klein. Look", she says grabbing her laptop, "here you can see the pink (the colour that refers to breast cancer), but it is not too dominant. The tagline is: Dop em, Check em. Chris Roberts did adjust it a bit for the British market. Roberts is creative director at Dyson and travelled to Enschede specially for the competition. Dorsheila: “He originally thought we were in Amsterdam, ha ha.” For the logo, the four students took the round shape of the breast as their starting point. Finn: “The logo is simple, but you can apply it in lots of different ways. Actually the design process flowed very naturally, there wasn't much stress involved."
In the beginning, we thought: is the creative director of Dyson really coming all the way to Enschede for us?"
They are delighted to have had the chance to come into contact with the professional field as students – and particularly with a big name like Dyson. "This assignment had just enough boundaries so that we knew what we had to do, without taking away our creative freedom", explains Finn. Dorsheila adds: “That kind of freedom is not something you always find in practice. This was a very corporate assignment, and they can often be very limiting." To start with, the two felt quite nervous about dealing with the creative director at Dyson. “You think, ‘He’s coming to Enschede just for us!’ But Chris was really relaxed, we had a good laugh with him. That took away a lot of the pressure of working for a real client. We didn't have to present to lots of men in suits."
A head full of Dyson
The hardest part of the assignment, they found, was the amount of time they had to put into it. “I spent two weeks doing nothing except think about Dyson”, says Dorsheila. "There was no room in my head for anything else. When the competition was over, I had to catch up on everything I had missed during those two weeks. Finn nods. “Other students found that a problem too. But above all, we had a lot of fun and we worked really well together. It felt like a real bonus that ours was the winning design, when all of the concepts looked really cool. Everyone approached the assignment in a different way."
Autonomous artists
Will the names of the four AKI students ultimately be linked to the brand identity of the Dotplot? Dorsheila: “That isn't clear as yet. The assignment was given to seven different academies, and each academy produced a winner. So it may be that they combine different elements from all the winning designs to create a branding." Finn adds: "For Dyson, the assignment was partly about recruitment. They are already looking at which students they might want to add to their team." Do the two of them see themselves having a future with Dyson? Finn: “Obviously, Dyson is very corporate, which is something the two of us are not. On the other hand, it would offer security, and there are worse employers you could end up with. All the same, I see us more as autonomous artists.”
