Early on Clayster understood the importance of storytelling as a key factor in building momentum around their vision and their brand. Our main challenge was to translate seemingly huge and complex topics into a coherent and inspiring story. We needed to find ways to make people understand and relate to solutions and situations that have not yet happened in a significant scale. Our main strategy was to use the bigger story of Next Generation Internet as a way to also tell the story about Clayster, the company – and to put their advanced technology into a relatable context.

We wanted to move away from the overtly tech-oriented aesthetics that is common in Clayster’s line of business. Instead we chose to focus on simple navigation with clean, minimalistic visual cues that would let the compact copy and beautiful videos really stand out. The combination of the lo-fi style of the illustrations and Clayster’s futuristic vision, created a very interesting tension.

In terms of content, the website was divided into three main narrative sections – STORY, PEOPLE and SYSTEM – focusing on Clayster’s vision, their company culture and their technology.

Our main idea was to move away from a traditionally tech-oriented aesthetics and go for a cleaner, more elegant and minimalistic visual style, built around a discreet yet high-contrast color palette, distinct typography and a few accentuating graphical symbols. We wanted the visual framework to be light and unobtrusive, allowing full attention to the copy, video and illustrations.

The logotype is equally minimalistic, consisting of the letter C complemented with a stylized (optionally animated) “on-off-switch” – a visual analogy for the core functionality of Clayster’s technology.

How to tell the story about the intangible? It was a great challenge to capture the complexity of something that everyone has a connection to, but still have a very hard time to fully grasp. It was clear to us that Clayster needed to focus a lot on visual storytelling, in order to tell the story they and their audience needed. We approached the challenge from a highly artistic and personal perspective, aiming to find a visual language that could translate the technical and philosophical complexity into something understandable, on a both logical and emotional level.

Together with artist Linnea Karlsson we made a series of illustrations with a somewhat quirky, yet highly personal and unique style. The illustrations were meant to contrast the otherwise rather future-oriented narrative with their playful, retro aesthetics. The illustrations were also used to create a series of explanatory stop motion animations.

In writing copy for Clayster we worked hard to avoid technical jargon and overused buzz words. The basic idea was to keep things readable but not simplified, mixing figurative metaphors and concrete examples that would explain complex issues in an understandable way.

Our main narrative concept was to present the tiny diatom as a kind of superhero, packed with amazing superpowers. By placing the diatom at very center of Swedish Algae Factory’s story we could also tell a bigger story about sustainability and the necessity of a circular economic mindset. The diatom, found deep down under the arctic ice, also had a very fascinating back story which we used as the main narrative hook.

We ended up redesigning the entire company website, built around the story we wanted to tell about the diatom and Swedish Algae Factory’s circular economic mindset. Our aim was to create an original aesthetic experience that should also be accessible and informative. We’re very satisfied with the outcome.

The films created for Swedish Algae Factory were meant to create an epic backdrop for the story about the diatom, connecting the advanced research carried out in the laboratory with the beauty of nature. We organized an extensive photo session at Swedish Algae Factory’s laboratory, resulting in a series of beautiful closeups depicting algae in their many fascinating forms.

Swedish Algae Factory’s visual identity was originally somewhat vague and impersonal. We wanted to find a visual language that felt modern, brave and hi-tech, but also with a holistic and environmental dimension to it. We also wanted to make use of the fascinating colors and shapes of the diatoms, and literally zoom in on the tiny but handsome hero of the story.

A series of stylized illustrations were made to explain the different applications of Swedish Algae Factory’s research. Originally inspired by the molecular structure of silicon dioxide – the illustrations made use of a few very minimalistic geometric shapes, to symbolise the highly flexible characteristics of the diatom.

In writing copy for Swedish Algae Factory we focused on finding an accessible and humble tonality in a digestible format, that should reveal the company’s high level of expertise without becoming too dense or complicated.

KTC Control are really good at what they do, with cutting edge expertise and a long tradition of pretty radical innovation. Unfortunately, they haven’t been great in taking credit for it, and even less so in letting others know about it. Our main mission has been to build an authentic and inspiring story that connects the past with the future, adding a sense of pride and motivation to the valuable services KTC Control provide. The energy industry is currently undergoing major changes. By fully understanding and communicating their own why, KTC Control is fully equipped to take the lead.

A great challenge was how to anchor the new vision and business model throughout the entire organization. Change is never easy, and we decided early on that we wouldn’t settle for anything less than full commitment from every part of the organization. In order for this to happen, we needed a transparent and adaptable process that would encourage dialogue and allow us to address specific needs along the way. In close cooperation with management, we arranged a series of workshops and events to accelerate and anchor the process.

We wanted to let the people behind KTC Control tell their own stories, using their own words. The most effective way to do this was to capture them on film. We carried out a series of interviews, with the company’s founder, the VP and more than twenty other employees – about how it all started, where they’re heading and what it means to work at KTC Control.

As a visible manifestation of our work with KTC Control we developed an in-house web portal where we could encapsulate and communicate all aspects of the company’s new identity as well as the ongoing change process. Mainly meant to be used as an internal, inspirational resource – the website highlighted KTC Control’s new vision, company culture, business model and visual identity – through video, copy and infographics. We also developed an interactive timeline highlighting important events throughout KTC Control’s history. With an emphasis on visual storytelling, the web portal contained a series of filmed interviews with the company’s founder, VP and staff.

KTC Control needed a visual identity that would better reflect their radical vision and company guidelines (“Courage. Flexibility. Quality.”). The graphics are bold, with sharp edges and distinct typographic elements – combined with a human centered approach, with a lot of visual focus on the people behind the story. The new logotype is built around six shapes that can be combined in various ways, utilizing negative space to highlight different parts and colors depending on context and background color. The color palette consists of different shades of green, symbolizing the past, the future and nature.

In writing copy for KTC Control we wanted to find a tonality that should feel confident and direct. We worked hard to avoid technical jargon, and sought to find concise, effective phrasings that could trigger both emotion and action.

When we first met with Honja Future Education, they were a brave idea without a shape. They started from the absolute beginning. We helped them create a complete digital storytelling and brand identity. It took many meetings, workshops and a great deal of soul-searching to find what it really was they wanted to do. We developed their entire e-learning platform, website and visual user experience design. Later on also their content strategies, user profiles and social media strategies.

Since Honja Future Education is an online learning platform, a lot of attention went into developing an attractive and informative website. This included the creation of a custom and scalable back-end system that could serve the content, as well as many hours of work on user experience (UX) and graphic design, to create an as intuitive and usable front-end as possible.

Honja Future Education's main concept is focused on online video courses. KAi was responsible for the entire production of film and photo, including direction, pedagogical development and coordination of every lecture, as well as post-production and video content for social media.

We carved out every single piece of writing for Honja Future Education, with care and precision. Which in itself was a challenge, since their product opens up an entirely new market segment, presenting something the world hasn't seen before.

Språkservice is a traditional family business, grown from the grass roots during almost 25 years. They have gone from small garage business to a revenue of more than 700 million SEK. When they approached KAi, it was the first time ever since they started out that they asked for external help with their brand identity. They wanted to come closer to their end clients, and tell their story through film, but didn't know what story to tell. When KAi came in, Språkservice had tried out several different narratives - but none that felt completely accurate. New recruits didn’t fully grasp the core values of the company. They also had a weak digital / social media presence and no real strategy for how to work with content.

We spent almost a year together figuring out who and what Språkservice wanted to be. It's a challenging task to update an existing corporate culture, especially with a company of this size, deeply rooted in a family tradition. But Språkservice where courageous and embarked upon a great journey, carving out a new and more clear narrative. In the end we agreed upon a story that the founders still could relate to, that yet was welcoming to newcomers and engaging enough to be embraced also by the outside world.

We documented the entire process towards a new narrative through film and photography. This material was mainly used internally as a way for Språkservice to be transparent about their process throughout the organization.

After a year together with Språkservice, we developed an entirely new concept for their content strategy. Språkservice has nearly 6000 freelance employees that they work with every day. We developed a new conceptual prototype from scratch, a web platform that could host and communicate the brand identity to everyone affiliated with Språkservice.

Språkfamiljen was a conceptual prototype we created for Språkservice. The concept included an online community, an introductory tutorial for new recruits and a series of films portraying the everyday life of a translator. Språkfamiljen was entirely built around the company's core values: "familiar – reliable – modern".

KAi produced a series of graphical prototypes and mockups, as well as detailed suggestions for the technical infrastructure behind the online platform Språkfamiljen. The idea was to provide conceptual guidelines for Språkservice's in-house developer team, to be used as inspiration during the implementation phase.

Together with the Academy of Innovation, Design and Engineering at Mälardalens högskola, KAi hosted a series of workshops aiming to explore and develop methods and strategies for idea generation and creative processes. The idea behind the educational process was to find a balance between theory and practice, mixing a series of practically oriented workshops with more theoretical homework in between.

Storytelling can be a very diverse and powerful tool not only for external communication, but also for internal process development and team building purposes. One question that came up a lot throughout the workshop series, was the problem of finding time for creative reflection within large, efficiency oriented organizations. We targeted this by introducing a series of hands-on methods for how to improve this particular skill. The results were quite amazing. Many of the participants became very emotionally affected by activating mind and body in ways they seldom or never had done before. One of the participants even went as far as to quit his job during the following feedback session, in order to free up more time for reflection…

A central concept during the workshop series was “Storyfinding”, i.e. working with different methods and tools to understand and better formulate stories, dreams and visions – as a team as well as on an individual level. During a time period of five months in total, the participants were introduced to a wide selection of tools for creative feedback, reflection exercises and dramaturgical techniques.

Main focus during the first worskhop with Malmö Cleantech City was on the importance of authenticity in storytelling, and how to create an emotional portfolio for your company.

The second workshop was more focused on content strategy. We walked through the required components, and presented various practical and theoretical methods that can be useful when creating and implementing your content strategy.

Your story isn’t just what you tell, but also what you believe in, and what others believe about you, which means that part of your story isn’t even told by you. Storydoing is about living your story and using it as a driver for action. During the workshop we introduced various succesful examples, and explained how different aspects of storytelling can and should be combined for an optimal outcome.