How do you visualize technology that can’t be seen? How do you give it tangible benefits? And convey what’s not human, in a human way?

When making the “What if” films, we had to develop a modern, signature 3D animation style based on IBM’s decades-old design system. The style couldn’t feel like anything IBM has produced before, yet it still had to look and feel like the IBM we know, incorporating brand colors and shapes.

The animations also had to make IBM’s abstract technology human and friendly. And convey IBM’s core products, like AI, data fabric, cybersecurity, and hybrid clouds in a way that’s easy-to-understand and approachable. Animations couldn’t be overly playful or metaphorical, and had to be embedded in reality, in order to instill trust in prospective customers’ minds.