Kind Studio crafts a floral identity for UAL's 2024 graduation ceremonies

University of the Arts London is known for incubating some of the world's most creative students. And so their graduation ceremonies are a big deal. Recently, UAL tasked Kind Studio with creating an identity for these ceremonies to celebrate the experimental spirit of more than 7,000 talented graduates completing their courses this year.

It was a dream gig for the studio, which was founded in 2015 by Sean Vellacott-Murphy and James Stockton. They'd originally met at Nottingham Trent University for their BA. Sean then went on to do a course at UAL himself: a master's in Graphic Communication at Chelsea College of Art & Design.

"Although I wouldn't recommend starting with no clients lined up, money to pay the rent and ten months of industry experience between us. I feel the lack of 'formal' experience has been a great thing and resulted in us approaching all of our projects in a really unique way," says James. "One of our founding principles was to always be close to the client, working collaboratively to help them feel like part of the design process, which has worked really well for us."

Along with an eclectic mix of industries and clients, from Premier League football teams to small charities and arts organisations, they've worked with UAL a number of times over the past nine years.

"It's been an organisation that's always been really close to my heart, so it's great to be doing creative work together," says Sean. "We were lucky enough to be added to their roster of design studios last year and have won a few projects since then. For instance, we created a brand and guide for CSM's undergraduate open days late last year."

The brief

The brief for the Graduation Ceremonies 2024 was to create an engaging, unique, and memorable visual theme to help celebrate the achievements of graduating students across UAL. This would provide graduates and their friends and family with a joyous moment to mark the completion of their courses.

This was to be carried across social media, internal communications, print, and throughout the day at the Royal Festival Hall.

Visual design

Kind crafted an identity that reflects the unique and exciting characteristics that make up each of the 7,000 graduates leaving UAL this year. Abstract flora made from unexpected and exciting materials blooms into life, representing new growth and the next step in their journey. This "interactive garden" was brought to life throughout the ceremonies at The Royal Festival Hall across print, environment, motion and social media.

The use of florals, Sean explains, was inspired by "the blossoming of a highly creative cohort leaving UAL, embarking on their next step. We've also always associated the concept of flowers, or bouquets with graduation and celebration in general. To reflect UAL's pedigree of producing both unique and experimental graduates, we took the floral theme and used abstract and unexpected materials to create the flowers."

The designer really wanted the flowers to feel unexpected and different, so they experimented extensively with materials to create unexpected pairings.

Sean adds: "UAL has a pretty extensive secondary colour palette, which we used as inspiration for colour and lighting. We worked with Stee Shaw, a frequent and talented collaborator of ours on the 3D and animation of the flowers."