koan is where NOPA scribbles outside the lines. Trial and error through experimentation
Scope of work
Production
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Branding
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Visual Identity
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Timeline
NA
Company
NOPA
Year
????
A lot of design now arrives already familiar. It is well spaced, well rendered and easy to approve, but it often feels like it came from the same place as everything else.
koan exists to push against that. It is NOPA's experimental dewsign arm; a space for rough thinking, visual tests and ideas that do not need to behave like client wortk straight away. Some things fail. Some things become useful. The point is to keep the work alive before it becomes predicatable
The results
100+
visual tests
1
direction worth building on
Experiments give us a clearer read on what work could become. Not by polishing it too early, but by pushing it through routes that were too rough, too strange or too uncertain to sit comfortably inside normal client work.
The approach
We started with rough work. The kind that is usually hidden before a client ever sees it, because it is awkward, unfinished or not yet easy to explain.
Thats why koan exists. It gives those early routes room to exist for longer, so we can see what they are actually doing. The useful parts are kept, the rest becomes evidence.