Belief
We believe performing an interface design-led update of the GM brand can be the impetus in helping the company truly comprehend that in today’s digital age, a brand’s interface is the principal representation of its brand identity.
Proof
Artifacts: Corporate home, about, design, and history landing pages; news landing, results, and article pages
Guidance: Art direction, content design, digital brand expression, information architecture, UI, UX
Tactics
We will explore multiple creative directions expressing unique, disparate paths for the GM brand through interface design. The directions will include differing approaches for GM’s digital design and content strategy, with deep consideration of how to minimize design debt whilst maintining high quality levels.
As GM.com is the most illustrative and interactive manifestation of GM’s brand identity, we will utilize this platform as our basis for displaying brand expressions, and shaping the elements of the directions expressed. In this initial phase, there will be three expressions shown, each representing a unique interface design-led direction.
Common Features Across Directions
Some juice ain’t worth the squeeze. These elements will be consistent across our directions, in consideration of inevitable production realities, usability issues, or simply because we believe there is a lack of impact in noticeably affecting brand character.
• Future-Forward Ethos
• Platform Frameworks
• Iconography
• Taxonomies
Unique Features Across Directions
We believe some features of a brand identity are vital to the representation of a brand’s character. These are the primary identity elements that will be the unique differentiators for each of the creative directions presented.
• Content Strategy
• Graphic Design
• Typography
• Copywriting
Exploration A: Purpose
Why do we do this?
We do this because we can’t help it. We’ve had a deep, burning desire to define and form the future of transportation as long as we can remember. We want to create things that advance the human race forwards. We have had this desire motivating us for over a century, and it will keep doing so for the rest of our futures.
This direction emphasizes the purpose that drives GM as a company. It features big, bold, reinforcing messaging, highlights futuristic concepts, and takes inspiration from GM's history as a company built on lofty ideas. By emphasizing this history as a long-time industry innovator, we infuse historic gravitas into the messaging—when GM says it intends to shape the future of transportation, these aren't hollow words.
Exploration B: Product
What do we create?
We make vehicles that will define the future of transportation. We have been driven by our designers and engineers to create the design-led, technology-led future of mobility. We are defined by what we create, and we make groundbreaking, culturally significant cars and trucks, because why else would we want to do this?
This company makes automobiles of all kinds—work trucks, luxury SUVs, sports cars, race cars, etc—and they are what we champion. The messaging is about GM's products, and not random nebulous, irrelevant PR initiatives. Here, the content leads by highlighting and elevating the consistently new products GM develops. New product launches are prioritized, with news and information about other vehicles and their brands also prominently featured.
Exploration C: Expertise
What are we skilled at?
We are pioneers in all aspects of creating automobiles—design, engineering, and production. Our teams are constantly innovating in all fields of transportation, and we’re planning on doing even more of it in the years ahead. If you want to be an innovator in the future of human mobility, you’ll want to do it with us.
In this direction, we champion the skills and talents of GM. This company is where some of the most creative, forward-thinking designers and engineers in the industry are working to develop the future of automobiles. GM's considerable capabilities in design, engineering, and manufacturing are all prominently highlighted, providing a platform for the company's talent to express themselves, with the added intent of appealing to future GM talent.
MVP Direction
After creating our three prospective design directions based on three disparate content strategies aligned with GM’s future-forward, industry pushing ethos, we build upon the insights discovered in these initial creative explorations. By coalescing and distilling our multiple previous executional ideas into one simple, scalable, and flexible design direction, we form a vision that can function as a foundational MVP for the new interface-led GM brand's future.
After creating our three prospective design directions based on three disparate content strategies aligned with GM’s future-forward, industry pushing ethos, we build upon the insights discovered in these initial creative explorations. By coalescing and distilling our multiple previous executional ideas into one simple, scalable, and flexible design direction, we form a vision that can function as a foundational MVP for the new interface-led GM brand's future.
News
As the primary driver of traffic to this platform, we will provide our News content the more contemporary, user friendly experience it deserves. To create a more usable digital newsroom experience, we have developed a new system of content classification to aid our users in discovering and exploring our copious amounts of content. Articles and their relevant visual content are presented together, and a new tagging system allows for easier searching.
About
What is GM about? General Motors is about automobiles, and the work that goes into creating them. The new About GM section acts as a vessel for users to discover content related to those automobiles and processes behind them, rather than the sanctimonious virtue signaling content plaguing the current experience.
History
GM has more history as an automaker than any other on the planet. We want to leverage this into immersive, dynamic content emphasizing the disruptive ways the company has changed the industry for over a century. By creating a story based on some of GM's past product milestones, we are essentially guiding users through the history of the American automobile.
Design
General Motors literally invented the car design studio. They have an incredible bounty of endemic, visually compelling content from the past, present, and future related to GM's design studios to utilize. Here, we use it to help provide GM's talented automotive designers a platform to spread their knowledge and insights.
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