Superunion offers clients “creative freedom” by sharing proprietary design software

Superunion has created “a suite of tools” for clients, allowing them to create new digital assets and experiences through generative, motion, and metaverse design.

The tools combine base technology, like JavaScript and WebGL, with customised algorithms which are tailored to individual clients and their needs. Superunion Asia’s digital director Jessica Tan says that the idea is to give the clients “creative freedom” by allowing them to create their own assets within their own in-house design team.

Tan explains that there are three main reasons for providing this “creative tech offer”. The first is brands wanting to be digital-first, meaning that they must “come alive to us on screen, so motion and coding and algorithms are all very important,” says Tan. The second is that the web is transitioning into Web 3.0 – the third generation of the evolution of web technologies – and the third is that Superunion wants to “give creativity back to the client”, Tan adds.

As brands are becoming more aware of these technological advances, Tan says they are also considering “what it means in terms of communicating with their audience”. She adds that, in turn, Superunion has thought about “how creativity and technology can work together”, so clients have become “very familiar with [the studio’s] generative work”.

One client already using its new custom tech is Evri. Its new visual system, designed by Superunion, involves many different typefaces in the wordmark and across the brand. “Using generative design, we codified the design principles into a tool, which was then customised for our client so that they could create their own assets,” says Tan.

Tan adds that Superunion suggested to Vodafone that it should employ the new tool, which it now uses to produce “endless variations” of its signature speech mark logo. The studio also combined generative design and data visualisation in a specific algorithm designed for Tabfund, a browser extension that allows you to donate your ad views to research.

“When you donate you can see the live visualisation of it, which is meant to help the user feel like they’re really making a difference,” Tan says. Though all the tools use the same base technologies, the algorithms have been tailored to what each brand requires.

Tan adds that the custom piece of software then “lives in [the clients] system and is accessible to all of its in-house designers, and any agencies it chooses to work with in the future.” Getting the design wrong when using this software is meant to be impossible, as Superunion “code in the design principles” of the brand, says Tan.

The studio also thought about how to make the tools easy for non-designers to use, deciding that it should be accessible to the “widest possible audience,” according to Tan. There is a possibility that these tools could become “publicly activated” which, Tan says, proves how easy it is to use.

Though the software is designed so that “small internal teams of designers can keep generating the assets they need,” Tan explains that the coding can always be built on and adapted by Superunion, to “expand the functionality” of the tools.

What clients will pay for the software depends on “what the ask is, what the deliverables are and how complex the project is,” says Tan. She adds that this new creative tech offer will be “a key driver of growth” for Superunion.