Colors and the Kids: Expanding the possibilities of brand identity and cultural expression.
Colors and the Kids, Berlin 2024
In early Spring 2024, sister studio International Magic were commissioned to create a new digital platform for Colors and the Kids (C A T K), an interdisciplinary studio working with design, motion, and music to expand the possibilities of brand identity and cultural expression.
It was a perfect opportunity for Magic as a Service to begin to integrate the innovations and components we’d been working on for the launch of our new enterprise design system.
As the project discovery phase began we introduced our vision for Mirror UI. Together we discussed how to create an image led, softer user experience with performant content filtering and seamless native integration, with accessibility at its core. Resulting in an iterative software platform which will grow and evolve as C A T K build their world.
The Work
C A T K have created a vast archive of work over the last ten years, spanning brand sculpture to narrative architecture, all with their unique modern lens; forward-facing images that blur the real and the virtual.
“This new photography plays with the uncanny contrast between too-perfect hyperrealism and unvarnished form, erasing the lines between CGI and reality. This hybrid approach moves beyond polishing a real product to create an entirely new object.”Maik Bluhm, Director C A T K
The Index
The sheer volume of content posed the question: How can we create a system able to display a large amount of media while maintaining fidelity and performance across a variety of modern devices?
We wanted users to be in control of their own journey, while providing a system flexible enough to always present content in a beautiful way. The index is both a useful tool and a novel toy, allowing people to experiment with sizing, colours, and media types to filter down to what’s most interesting to them.
⌘ K
The Search
As content is ingested into the platform we use a computer vision suite of pre-trained models to identify tens of thousands of concepts across the media library and tag the content accordingly. This data is displayed on the front-end interface via a custom search component which can reveal projects, media types, disciplines, tags and colours to create a richer, faster and contextual search experience.
The Projects
C A T K’s mixture of brand-led, sensory storytelling has led to collaborations with organisations such as Lego, IBM, New Tendency and Issey Miyake, partners who all share a commitment to original thinking and leading-edge practices.
With all of the content on offer, it only made sense to create a high fidelity image first approach to project case studies. The central gallery allows for a native scrolling experience which puts the work front and centre, and a drawer expands from the bottom to allow for deeper explorations of each piece of work. The automated grid system lays out content dynamically so no matter what the project requires, images are always shown at their best.
The Blog
Finally, we discussed the creation of a space where non-commercial experiments could live; a space where the C A T K Research & Development content could exist in a non-linear editorial format. A dark-mode contrasts with the index, creating a quieter browsing experience with the same familiar functionality.
We continue to work closely with the C A T K team and will be integrating forthcoming Mirror UI features iteratively in the future together.
Visit Colors and the Kids
Design by International Magic
Engineering by Magic as a Service™
Powered by Mirror Ui
