IBM – Smart City Storyboards

IBM has been working on a concept called a SmartCity and would like to unveil it to the world. SmartCity is still under development, so instead of showing very specific things, they wanted to showcase some of the broader ideas encompassed by the project: Less traffic, affordable housing, lower energy costs. IBM really needed to make this feel friendly… as this technology could be seen as intrusive, the design needed to help reinforce the idea that this is safe and to be used for good. I used lots of bright colors from the IBM branding guidelines and boarded out an initial idea or a transition from scene to scene on a dark neutral gray to make the colors pop and show a progress from framing devices. Hexagons, circles, squares, and triangles were used as constraining frame for the first half, showing the limitation of a traditional city. As the story revealed the smart city solution, the framing opened up to reflect the freeing-up of resources.