Cambridge is a region famous for its innovation and discoveries. And if you know what the region can do, and what it enables, it’s amazing. But if you don’t, it’s amazingly complicated.

Its unique cluster of University talent, start-ups, investors, hospital trusts and investors all use slightly different ways to describe the region.

And as the innovation community unites with the local City councils and planners to solve the region’s challenges our task was to create a shared vision, story and ambition for the entire area. This is critical to keep attracting the new investment and skills that will fuel future innovations across life sciences, technology and AI, and retain the talent that already exists there. No easy task.

We began by developing a core narrative that is rooted in the City’s life-changing discoveries. After all, the city of Cambridge is where the theory of gravity was developed and the structure of DNA was discovered.

And what began within the walls of its world-famous university has grown into Europe’s leading knowledge ecosystem that encircles the region – fusing 5,000 innovation-driven companies, 60 multinationals, five hospital trusts, three dozen research parks, two universities (Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin) and a thriving start-up and investor community.

We summed this all up in just four words – Where Innovation Makes History – then combined this with one of John Venn’s famous diagrams (himself a Cambridge University alumnus from the 19th century) to create a simple badge for the destination brand.

As we explored how the idea could develop, we took the diagrammatic theme and ran with it across algebra, equations, diagrams and wordplay. This draws on the region’s scientific reputation to the benefit of the scheme, creates a unique visual and verbal language, and reflects the fact that this is a region stuffed with smart people.

This core idea allows us to communicate in a way that’s intelligent, witty and uniquely Cambridge – and differentiate them from other global innovation hubs which share virtually identical language and fall quickly into ‘placemaking’ and inward investment cliches.

We combined our favourite ideas with stills and moving image of the wide-open skies that Cambridgeshire is famous for to create a design toolkit that can permeate multiple types of media. Here they are in action across animations, presentations and conference backdrops.