Why Roam?
For our senior thesis we were given permission to do anything we'd like. I wanted to use this generous opportunity to explore a number of fascinations, and develop different skills.
Fascinations
Future Planning
Artificial Intelligence
Tiny Homes
Transportation
Travel
Skills
Video Editing
Story Telling
Branding
Business
Project goal
This project was an exercise in Brand Storytelling, System Design, Web Design, Video Production and Art Direction, all done through a future perspective of 10 years out.
While the combination of topics blended perfectly around presenting a platform, the challenge was piecing it all together in a cohesive, digestible way.
Branding
Setting the Roam tone.
"Simple" "In motion" "Optimistic"
Typeface
Montserrat
Section: Semi Bold / 210pt
Header: Semi Bold / 60pt
Paragraph: Light / 24pt
Details: Light / 14pt
I chose Montserrat because I think it is great for communicating friendliness, and simplicity. It is both timeless and futuristic. Pairing a few sizes and weights with the colors means the branding has easy to follow guidelines for every use case.
Colors
Four colors make up the palette. Three unsaturated foundational colors for varying degrees of information, sizes, and backgrounds. The bright pop of color comes in a delightful, optimistic shade of blue.
Logomark
The logomark emphasizes "R" on first read, the first letter of "Roam". The shape of the R resembles the iconic home profile one a second read, while the leg of the 'R' juts out in a form of forward thinking and motion.
R O A M
Iconography for the Roam brand. Animated to demonstrate motion, with the familiar profile of a home. Mobile home. The simple iso view helps keep Roam unbiased towards one particular mobile home design, while still being able to have a "mascot home" of their own, so to speak.
Voice
"
If you want to live someplace permanently, consider a condo.
If you want to live anywhere, consider Roam.
"
Developing Roam meant writing compelling copy. To do this well I had to know the story in and out and learned a lot about how brand voice can be a product of the design process. In this case, a call to action, to the future, to possibility.
Visuals
Designing the look of the Roam platform.
Showcasing the Roam brand with strong visuals that are both informational and aspirational. Using custom aerial footage while referencing existing images from brand partnerships. All together they should paint a vivid picture of how the platform interacts with autonomous mobile homes.
Brand Referece
Many of the photos used to present the Roam platform were directly from tiny/mobile home manufacturers, and actual autonomous semi trucks. Rather than claim these as my own, I provide clear titles and direct links, reinforcing the idea that Roam is a system, woven among other successful large brands.
Design for the Roam Home
The home design for Roam has come such a long way- and I love where it ended up. It began with sketches for a autonomous home I would design, then I began to see greater value in a system that a mobile home could interact in, which would allow me to focus on exercising other skills I hadn't developed (as mentioned above.) To successfully present Roam as a platform, it is important to be a blank slate for brands and consumers to build upon. Roam's friendly, familiar, nondescript homes are ideal for discussing the parts and pieces in a scaled back, but understandable way.
Roam Home Concepts
Ideas all across the board, ending with a simple block-like aesthetic, originating with a system including an app, buses, homes and benches. Some really fun concepts in here, many would have been cool to go with but I'm happy where I ended up. Click to view.
Physical Model Design
To present the idea in person I played with the idea of scale and the uncanny valley. By keeping the building blocks of the concept undefined, it gives users a chance to use their imagination, projecting their personal visions and use cases onto the white rectangles representing 'autonomous mobile homes'. Roam being the platform tying these three areas together (City, Suburb, Country). Originally I was going to do large scale maps of each, but after cutting out the SF Bay area, decided against it because it looked too busy, and was distracting.
For many of the visuals I used Google Earth Studio - Special thanks to them for allowing me to use their Beta tool.
One of the biggest challenges for Roam was how to visualize a something as abstract as a "platform". I was Google Earth Studio was a great way to create content that helped visualize movement on a large scale.
After Effects allowed me to add edits and overlays to the Earth image sequences.
I'd always wanted to learn the program so I could be better at communicating with video & motion.
Es → Ae → Me
Earth Studio → After Effects → Media Encoder (Mp4)
Part of utilizing Earth Studio was learning how it all came together. By watching tutorials on how to piece together the individual frames in After Effects, edit them, add effects and animations, then prepare it for the web.
Here's an example of the results:
01
Initial Concepts
Swipe to view the initial concept opportunities for this project. These concepts were inspired by brainstorming exercises and refined to find the most ideal one.
Proposal
02
Swipe to view the thinking behind this project. Showing research, storyboards, technology and more.
