Creative

The UK’s creative talents have inspired and dazzled the world for centuries — expressing ingenuity on stages, screens, and new media platforms.

Its globally recognised film studios and effects houses in London, Belfast and elsewhere, have sustained a long-standing practice of joining forces with international counterparts from Bollywood to Hollywood. The UK’s worldwide output of film industry services alone is nearly £2 billion a year.

The influence of British imagination is sparking innovation in digital games with 23% of this industry’s top development studios based in the country. Challenging conventions and reshaping our landscape, renowned UK architects are also helping other nations craft a future of firsts through work on groundbreaking spaceports and smart buildings.

What if a man’s Twitter followers came to life, prompting a crowd of people to swarm around him? Imagine a 3D piece of architecture continuously changing shape and texture as it charges forward on two legs.

Such surreal scenarios are not just the stuff of dreams. They are two examples of 21st century masterpieces by Universal Everything, a Sheffield digital design studio breaking new ground in creative visualisation through visionary thinking and high-tech tools.

The aforementioned architectural ‘video sculpture’ was shown at Beijing’s Museum of Fine Arts, Ars Electronica in Linz, and other art spaces, and ultimately caught the attention of Hyundai.

The Seoul automaker commissioned Universal Everything to create a bespoke adaptation of it to highlight the brand’s recycling process.

The result: Running Man, a riveting motion capture video and musical score which visualises the evolution of smouldering steel in human-like form into automobile and then back into steel again. The work was displayed in three locations, including New York’s Times Square.

“A significant proportion of our time is spent developing our own art pieces, prototypes and concepts and releasing them into the world in museums, exhibitions and galleries,” says Matt Pyke, Universal Everything’s founder and creative director, “Then they get seen by brands and turned into commercial commissions.”

Virtually Limitless

Established in 2004, Universal Everything has also counted among its clients Apple, Airbus, Deutsche Bank and Nike. It began as Pyke’s own design business, but has grown to include half a dozen full-time employees spread across UK and 30 remote talent resources in Japan, Argentina, the United States and elsewhere.

As the name implies, Universal Everything’s remit is virtually limitless. Their immersive digital experiences have engaged visitors at major institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art. They collaborated with the band Radiohead to fashion an experimental audio-visual app. At Milan Design Week in 2017, they worked with Zaha Hadid Architects and Samsung on an interactive installation.

The latter was a dream project for Pyke who studied graphic design at Croydon College of Art. “This combination of architecture, display and video content is a main area we’re focusing on as a studio,” he notes.

Such appreciation for architectural detail and context can be seen in their work placed in landmark locations.

They partnered with over 20 global animation studios on an ambitious project which displayed a living digital mural on the iconic curved surfaces of the Sydney Opera House.

“It was very much site specific, emphasising the unique shape and form of the building and complementing that rather than just projecting our vision onto someone else’s shape,” recalls Pyke.

“We’re trying to find new tools that we can use to create new forms of expression that could only be achieved by, say, motion capture, body tracking technology or holographic screens.”

Immersed in Tech

Likewise, the latest advances in video displays have piqued his interest, among them both irregular-shaped and transparent screens. Universal Everything is relentless in keeping up with emerging tech.

“We’re trying to find new tools that we can use to create new forms of expression that could only be achieved by, say, motion capture, body tracking technology or holographic screens,” he says.

He and his team have used Microsoft’s Kinect body tracking hardware to reshape human body movement into abstract real-time animation.

Joining forces with renowned French choreographer Benjamin Millepied, they captured dancers’ moves and transformed them into non-figurative digital art for a London Science Museum installation.

“We’re trying to find new tools that we can use to create new forms of expression that could only be achieved by, say, motion capture, body tracking technology or holographic screens.”

The Next Level of Design

One of Universal Everything’s newest creative forays has led them back to an exploration they began over a decade ago. Pyke and his brother Simon, a sound designer, had been researching synesthesia, a sense-crossing condition which makes people hear colours and taste sounds.

They now have plans to produce a series of immersive 360-degree films which visualise Simon’s music and take it to the next level: virtual reality. Pyke is in talks with a VR company and headset manufacturers to make this happen.

“VR is the ultimate way of creating these fully immersive, expressive all-encompassing ideas, which are very different to the narrative of traditional cinema,” he says. “We’ve got a lot of plans for VR in the future. It’s definitely going to be a big part of the studio.”

Even while embracing such tech and speeding ahead towards new frontiers, the Universal Everything team is keeping its eyes on perhaps the most precious innovation of all: creativity.

Pyke adds: “The most important thing for us is that the technology is invisible or very distant and the creative expression remains in the foreground.”

“The most important thing for us is that the technology is invisible or very distant and the creative expression remains in the foreground.”

Imagine a lavish apartment, complete with carpets hand-tufted in Switzerland and leather armchairs crafted in partnership with Ferrari upholsterers Poltrona Frau. Behind a pair of elegant trellised screen doors, further decorative details, like marquetry, are revealed.

Such is the interior view at 30,000 feet in Etihad Airways’ game-changing first class cabin, a concept designed by award-winning UK consultancy Acumen Design Associates.

These opulent sky nooks known as First Apartments — each accommodating a separate passenger — are perhaps only bested by the crowning jewel of Etihad’s first class: The Residence. This unique super-luxury suite features a living space, enclosed bedroom with designer Italian bed linens and a private en-suite shower room.

“This was really an exercise in reinstating what it is to travel first class and making sure passengers get tangible value from the extra money they pay,” says Anthony Harcup, Acumen’s associate director.

The groundbreaking platform, which he co-invented, was in part a response to the trend of business class offerings increasingly resembling those of first class, among them lay flat beds.

World’s First Bed in the Sky

This is an area Acumen not only understands but pioneered. Before cementing a reputation for disruptive commercial aviation design, one of its nautical projects had caught the eye of British Airways (BA), which commissioned the firm to revolutionise its first class cabin.

In 1996, Acumen rolled out the never-before-seen bed in the sky for BA. Industry response was overwhelming.

“Every tier one airline in the world sat up and took notice and they all wanted their own version,” says Harcup. The flat bed went from first class sensation to business class benchmark.

Acumen was founded in London in 1981 by current CEO Ian Dryburgh, and its team has gone on to design cabins and in-flight furnishings for scores of other top airlines, such as Cathay Pacific, Delta and Lufthansa.

The consultancy, which broadly works with blue chip companies and across other sectors creating everything from round paper towels to baby cots, has also done exterior styling and packaging on economy class products.

“EVERY TIER ONE AIRLINE IN THE WORLD SAT UP AND TOOK NOTICE AND THEY ALL WANTED THEIR OWN VERSION.”

Big Ideas for Small Spaces

However, ambitious first class revamps like the Etihad project have clearly afforded the team golden opportunities through which to showcase the scope of its design and engineering prowess.

“Etihad was at the very top end,” says Catherine Barber, Acumen’s brand development manager, “It’s not often that you’re given this freedom and this budget to work with.”

The elegant first class cabin’s clever central aisle layout, flanked on each side by the private ‘apartments,’ laid the groundwork for other innovations, such as a vaulted ceiling, and furniture which accommodates extra stowage.

“Our innovation lies in thinking about the particular demands of the small space, what the passenger wants from the experience, and bringing those two together in the best possible way,” says Barber.

Such solutions-driven ideas are also developed independently. Members of Acumen’s multidisciplinary team, whose specialties range from industrial design engineering and car and luxury yacht interiors to branding, brainstorm their own inventions in internal workshops and on an ad hoc basis.

Dryburgh, Acumen’s founder, conceived of one such design while sketching on a train. The resulting Optima configuration consists of one forward-facing seat and one angled seat, and is now the most space-efficient all aisle access/flat bed business class concept on the market.

Acumen successfully pitched it to United Airlines, which launched it on its B787s, A350s and B777s, under the name Polaris, in 2016.

Travelling Light

Always looking ahead, the team is teasing out ideas for the next wave in aircraft interiors: “Transforming clumsy and outdated products into much more integrated, lightweight, sophisticated designs,” according to Harcup. He sees flexible OLED displays and touch screens, HD projections and VR headsets as elements of the cabin of the (near) future.

Acumen is also looking to bring its expertise to the emerging autonomous vehicles market. Cars without drivers have their design perks, such as seats which needn’t follow the traditional automotive precedent of facing forward.

Barber sees synergy between these developments and Acumen’s experience in crafting business class seating as an opportunity. She concludes optimistically: “Suddenly, we can change the whole paradigm.”

“TRANSFORMING CLUMSY AND OUTDATED PRODUCTS INTO MUCH MORE INTEGRATED, LIGHTWEIGHT, SOPHISTICATED DESIGNS.”