While Head of Creative at Stratos, Milton Keynes City celebrated a year since the 2023 AI Summit at Bletchley Park (aka where the real tech magic happens), so the council decided it was time to throw a proper party—AI style. Enter the Milton Keynes AI Festival: a week-long deep dive into the future, packed with talks, demos and interactive moments designed to make you say, “Wow, that’s clever.”

But future-facing fun needs future-facing design. The brief? Build a brand that captured MK’s unique vibe as a modern, tech-forward city leading the way in smart innovation, while still playing nice with the existing city identity. Taking cues from the Milton Keynes brand’s signature squares, I evolved the humble shape into a multi-sided, forward-moving device—an aesthetic that feels like it’s headed somewhere (fast). These dynamic forms became windows into the future, housing AI-generated visuals and appearing across installations, hubs and digital touchpoints across the city.

The final identity struck the balance: part civic pride, part sci-fi sparkle. Bold, brainy, and just the right amount of “we know what machine learning means.”