Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, home of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is growing rapidly and becoming more clogged every day. KLM asked us to highlight six of their initiatives that improve ease of travel through the airport for its passengers. From avoiding lines at check-in desks to new ways of boarding that prevent queuing up in the aisle.

We needed to find a way that would make people – especially their own passengers – notice and realize that KLM is also making their passengers’ journey a more pleasurable experience outside of their planes. Objective: reach and engage primarily KLM passengers, and secondarily as many Schiphol visitors as possible, with this message, in such a way that it sticks in their mind.

In a perfect world, people travelling with KLM would always be able to continue their journey on the airport as smoothly and unobstructed as possible. We found an extremely simplified metaphor for this: a marble that literally moves in the path of least resistance, and our KLM services helping it to achieve that.

Based on this metaphor, we built a fascinating piece of craftsmanship: a kinetic installation around 198 steel marbles in motion, representing passengers on their way to catch a flight. They move through a seemingly chaotic airport and end up in the structured environment of an airplane cabin.

The handcrafted installation leads ‘passengers’ past various KLM initiatives that smoothen their journey, each linked to a special segment in the installation. Like a fast lane for people using self-service baggage check-in or by featuring a specially developed algorithm that helps passengers board without queuing up in the aisle.

We created a kinetic installation around 198 steel marbles in motion, representing passengers on their way to catch a flight. The marbles move through a seemingly chaotic airport and end up in the structured environment of an airplane cabin.

The installation consists of a steel track – completely created by hand – which leads the marbles past six KLM initiatives that smoothen their journey. We linked each product/service to a special segment in the installation, Like a fast lane for people using self-service baggage check-in or by featuring a special developed algorithm that helps passengers board without queuing up in the aisle.

The installation was exhibited at the Dutch Open Golf tournament (14-17 Sept), at the Dutch Design Week (21-29 Oct) and will be exhibited for three months at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the near future.