Greater London Authority

Digital playbooks for Smart Cities

The Sharing Cities Programme is an EU-funded initiative which tests, shares and implements technologies which improve the sustainability of cities – across urban mobility, energy efficiency, citizen engagement and data. London is one of the 6 pilot cities, and the Greater London Authority needed to create a series of guides to help others across Europe learn about implementing these technologies capable of achieving big social change.

Client: Greater London Authority
Services: Illustration, digital design

Result

We developed a series of ‘Digital Playbooks’ to help policymakers and service users alike learn about various elements needed to implement smart city services, drawing on the playful core Programme identity. We also created a series of illustrations to bring these elements to life, which could also be used stand-alone on social media.

Each city had produced slightly different materials, and so we needed to simplify some of the brand elements – from standardising the typography to expanding the colour palette – so these would feel authoritative and still retain its playful nature of the Programme’s visual identity, to be well-received across the whole network.

Impact

The first two Digital Playbooks, looking at e-Bikes and Digital Social Markets, have started to be disseminated to new, prospective cities for the second round of the Programme. The presentation and navigation of the products has already contributed to increased downloads and expressions of interest.

“It’s Like This helped us design our playbooks – the culmination of our lessons learnt throughout the 5-year Sharing Cities programme – and therefore are very important documents! We love how they look and they have also been very well received by our partners and audiences. It’s Like This are fantastic to work with – they really understood what we needed, working in a thoughtful and inquisitive way to produce designs that exceeded our expectations.”

Sandy Tung Sharing Cities Programme Manager, GLA