Aston Martin’s new brand and creative platform ‘Intensity.Driven.’ is designed to capture the human emotion of the driving experience.

Aston Martin is a British cultural icon, a well-known ultra-luxury brand. But its cars were known more as luxurious grand tourers than for their outright performance, and its branding reflected this. It needed to modernise and increase the performative aspect of the brand in order to stand out in the ultra-luxury market.

At its core, the rebrand is about the emotional connection drivers feel when driving an Aston Martin and the technological innovation that enables this. All aspects of the brand – from film to social media to print – rely on different elements, brought together to deliver an overall experience of this emotional connection.

Design Bridge and Partners captured the authentic emotion of driving by
using data visualisation. “We used an EEG/PPG device and Tobii Pro Glasses to capture the heart, brain and pupil data of an engineer in the Aston Martin Valkyrie. We also captured the car’s speed and decibel data, giving us a full set of both data that reflects how the car performs, and data that demonstrates the effect this performance had on the human body,” explains Design Bridge.

“The data gave us the authenticity necessary to make the work meaningful. The next stage was to interpret the data. Generative visualisations bring all the data to life and, combined with evocative copy, powerfully communicate the intensity of the experience.

“Each visualisation is the result of a generative art process, where code helps the digital artist to create the work within strict aesthetic boundaries. The particle texture brings a futuristic sense to the work, to reinforce an innovative Aston Martin brand, a world away from the more classic and conservative views of the past.

“Animations capture the power of the hyper car with emotive visualisations of speed and the sound of the engine as it accelerates through the gears. Three animations capture the impact of the driving experience on the human brain, pupil and heart activity. At peak speeds, the engineer’s heartbeat reached 120bpm (from 60bpm). This became the heartbeat of the brand itself, reflected in a brand wing end-frame animation that pulses at 120bpm.”

Credits:
Agency: Design Bridge and Partners
ECD: Stuart Radford
Creative Director: Sam Hall
Client Partner: Suzanne Neal
Senior Account Manager: Lucy Jones
Strategy Partner: Adam Sefton
Design Directors: George Bradshaw, Piers Komlosy
Senior Designers: Leanne Kitchen, Sam Ratcliffe
Copy Director: Tom Tytherleigh
Technical Director: Edward Pescetto
Producers: Christine Richter, Dionne Compton
Artworkers: Anton Fimaier, Jeremy Down, Tom Fisher, Alex Zanzico
Directors: Per Hampus, Daniel Blom
Production Company: Dog Eat Dog Productions
Photographer: Marc Trautmann
Post-Production: Zoot Productions, Unit
Digital Artists: Alex Guevara, Daniel Dalfovo, Itaru Yasuda
Motion Capture: Laurens van den Broek, Tobii