MIT IQ
MIT’s Intelligence Quest will advance human and machine intelligence to drive the development of technological tools that can positively influence virtually every aspect of society.
This new school will encourage life scientists, computer scientists, social scientists, and engineers to join forces to investigate the societal implications of their work as they pursue hard problems lying beyond the current horizon of intelligence research. We worked across administration, professors, and schools to bring this bold and important initiative to life.
2018
Blue State + MIT
Creative Director
⬛️ In-house
☑️ Agency
⬛️ Freelance
⬛️ Self-Initiated
Naming
Branding
Art Direction
Web Design
Messaging
Guidelines
A stark brand for a serious initiative
The name of this initiative needed to immediately set the massive scope of the project, the never-ending nature of the work, and couldn’t be tied to any one discipline. After multiple rounds with the stakeholders we landed on The MIT Intelligence Quest, or MIT IQ for short.
The mark is filled with hidden meanings. The Q has the feel of a magnifying glass, which connects nicely to Quest and discovery. The underline bar is a visual counter-weight to the tail of the Q while also forming a hidden 1 in the negative space between the “i” and the “Q”. Combined with the 0 in the negative space of the “Q”, this easter egg of a 1 creates a hidden binary code reference.
The foundation of our color palette is the pairing of black and white. The contrast of these two colors strikes a serious tone in all communication and is reminiscent of a scientific white-paper. Yellow is the key accent color; with its brightness and slight notes of green, it communicates MIT IQ’s vigor and science focused mission.
Web & messaging
Animated web tableaus
The scope and transformative nature of these projects are so big, some could be hard for the layman to understand. We distilled the ideas down to a single message paired with a visual collage for to create wonder and awe.
These were built to bring showcase the variety and life in all the projects.
All of these were designed and coded in a 5 day sprint.
Launch materials
For the site launch for this moon shot initiative I baked the team some brownies in the shape of the logo and put it on a moon platter. 🤙
SELECT PRESS from the PROJECT
FastCo: MIT’s big brains will study brains to build better brains
Financial Times: Rise of the robots: are you ready?
Tech Crunch: MIT is aiming for AI moonshots with Intelligence Quest
Geek Wire: On human intelligence and the quest for smarter machines
MIT News: MIT reshapes itself to shape the future
The FINAL FACT
George Boole published a paper in 1847 called 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic' that describes an algebraic system of logic based on binary, a yes-no, on-off approach that consisted of the three most basic operations: AND, OR, and NOT. This system was not put into use until a graduate student from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Claude Shannon, noticed that the Boolean algebra he learned was similar to an electric circuit. Shannon wrote his thesis in 1937, which implemented his findings. Shannon's thesis became a starting point for the use of the binary code in practical applications such as computers, electric circuits, and more. SOURCE →