Visual lexicon on innovation: the world of the brain

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The brain is where it all begins: innovation sprouts in our minds as we probe, iterate and creatively repurpose solutions. When we thought about which characters could represent innovators in UNHCR, a brain was top of our list. By giving human characteristics to a brain, we brought together the cerebral and the human in all of us, while conveying the emotional and sometimes exhausting experience of innovating. Creativity and experimentation require a lot of collaboration, reflection, and patience with ourselves, with others and with our institutions.

The first part of designing our beloved brain character came when we were creating GIFs to represent different aspects of the innovation process. We wanted a GIF that captured the overload we sometimes feel, because we’ve all been in a situation where we want to make a decision, but it feels like there is so much information that it paralyses our decision-making process. This GIF represents that overload, and the frustration we may experience as we try to innovate in the face of overwhelming amounts of information and knowledge.

The result was the Innovation Brain - a bold, pink character with endearing expressions and socks to match. It represents the dedication and the quirks we admire in our diverse peers at UNHCR. We decided that this character could be used to emote so much more, and we promptly got to work designing a pack of stickers that convey the wild ride of emotions associated with innovation.