Capturing the story of one of the world's largest private endowment, building a world where everyone has the power to shape their lives.

Ford Foundation

Upperquad explores a design system in collaboration with the Ford Foundation.

Over eighty years, the Ford Foundation has sought to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. Uppequad worked closely with the Ford Foundation's brand team to develop a new visual and storytelling approach.

As part of our process, we immersed ourselves deeply in understanding the organization. We actively engaged with different teams at the Ford Foundation. We looked at challenges, opportunities and audience, translating brand characteristics into visual themes. Upperquad approached brand colors, focus colors, iconography and illustrations with an eye for consistency and accessibility.

The collaboration focused on the home page and presented a first draft of a design system.

Explore more at <a href="https://www.fordfoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">fordfoundation.org</a>.

A generative poster project and gallery from Upperquad.

Hello from Here

Hello From Here is a generative poster project and gallery.

Upperquad launched a creative experiment that allows anyone to make a poster, just by inputting a city and interacting with artwork generated by real-time weather data. Every poster gets added to a gallery of people saying hello from around the world.

When you enter the name of a city, the generator creates artwork based on real-time data, such as temperature and weather. You can then interact with the poster to make it your own, before submitting it to a gallery of posters from places near and far.

In addition to the website, we ran an outdoor media campaign in the streets of Berlin with 34 custom posters, and sent beautiful holographic art prints to our friends across the globe.

We chose typography called Bandeins Strange for its abstract qualities in some letterforms, giving it a more interesting texture with kinetic motion applied. On the technical side, we used React on the front-end and Firebase for the gallery back-end. The generative posters are a complex combination of kinetic type (using p5.js), image processing, and cursor-movable 3D shapes (using the ThreeJS library), all generated based on data fetched from various weather and map APIs.

Hello from Here combines boundary pushing design, type and technology. Upperquad is always making things that reach new audiences and extend our capabilities.

On <a href="https://www.awwwards.com/sites/hello-from-here" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Awwwards.</a>

A book exploring how we re-envisioned our approach to economics, order, security, and even knowledge itself.

The Age of AI

Philanthropic visionaries at Schmidt Futures launched a website and social campaign for The Age of AI, in collaboration with Upperquad.

AI is poised to transform every major arena, from our societal institutions to human consciousness itself. This book explores how and what we can do about it.

"The  visual identity and digital experience for Age of AI focused on a cohesive look from the bookstand to social," said Marcio Gutheil, Art Director at Upperquad. "Our focus was to educate and inform."

See the site at <a href="https://ageofaibook.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ageofaibook.com</a>

Our collaboration with Jigsaw is honored with a Webby

Jigsaw and Upperquad win a Webby

Our collaboration with Jigsaw is a Webby winner for Best Individual Editorial Feature for the Current.

Jigsaw is a team within Google that exists to confront the most pressing digital threats facing society today. For the second installment of their digital magazine, The Current, we worked with Jigsaw to share their research about the rise of violent white supremacy online and the steps we must take to fight it.

Hailed as the Internet’s highest honor by The New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international awards organization honoring excellence on the Internet. This Upperquad's 5th Webby win, on 8 nominations.

<a href="https://jigsaw.google.com/the-current/white-supremacy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">View the work</a> or [see our case study](/work/the-current)

Ford Foundation

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Hello from Here

The Age of AI

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