What can distinguish our innovation centre within our brand?

An innovation centre's identity should make capabilities visible that audiences do not already associate with the parent brand. For Maersk, The Frameworks conducted stakeholder interviews to understand perceptions of the business and found that the Innovation Center had little to no exposure despite the parent brand's established reputation. Many target audiences still associated Maersk with ships and containers rather than technology-enabled, digital supply chain capabilities.

The identity and website therefore needed to showcase creativity and speed alongside Maersk's established experience. The Frameworks used customer and audience empathy research and user experience mapping to put current projects, case studies and examples at the centre of the digital experience. For an innovation centre, the practical starting point is to identify the gap between familiar parent-brand associations and the capabilities the centre needs to communicate, then give those capabilities a clear place in its identity and content.

Recognisable parent-brand elements can provide the starting point for an innovation centre's distinctive visual language. For the Maersk Innovation Center, The Frameworks worked within Maersk's existing brand guidelines and developed a "blueprint for innovation" concept based on the centre's role as an incubator for new ideas.

The illustration approach drew on the sharp edges of the Maersk star and the blocky, chunky character of its logotype. Those characteristics became a creative visual identity designed to resonate with and enhance the parent brand. The Frameworks extended the identity into an interactive launch landing page, animating five innovation areas to convey their concepts and support navigation. The approach offers a practical way to distinguish a centre: reinterpret existing shapes and characteristics into an illustration and motion language suited to its role, rather than starting with unrelated visual elements.