School of Digital Arts

The School of Digital Arts is an interdisciplinary school at Manchester Metropolitan University – a £35m investment into the workspaces, networks, teaching and research that will drive the next generation of creative content. 

Before it opened its doors we were approached to create a robust brand system that incorporated a new vision for the school and give not only tools for internal staff to use but to promote the courses to the wider world.

The architecture of the school was built to foster multidisciplinary collaboration, different strands all coming together on every floor to create an innovative space to create. With this in mind we developed an ever evolving ‘digital strand’ that reacted to sound made within the school, this audiovisual form could shape shift across the schools digital screens, onto the website and across all of the marketing.

We worked alongside a variety of digital producers to apply the brand within numerous technologies including creating NFT artwork to give away to launch attendees and developing AR print experiences to delve into the schools offer. We developed the framework animation for the four storey high LED building facade, enabling us to flow the ‘digital strand’ across the building but set the stage for students to utlise this enormous canvas.

We have since extended the brand, developing identities for a variety of projects and subbrands, creating systems that are visually distinct whilst still being part of the SODA identity.

This includes Modal, the School’s digital gallery that showcases artists working at the forefront of creative technology.