What if infrastructure didn’t just connect systems but brought people and ideas together?

That’s the challenge and invitation behind our work with Professor Jon Hays, John Masey and colleagues across the UKRI’s National Federated Compute Services’ NetworkPlus grant – an initiative to shape the future of computational research infrastructure across the UK.

We’re helping to create a visual identity and website that makes this ambitious collaboration feel future facing, ethical and truly interdisciplinary.

Why it matters

From climate modelling and cancer research to AI and the arts, the UK’s research community increasingly relies on large-scale computing. But the systems behind it can feel siloed, invisible and disconnected - even to those working on the inside.

The National Federated Compute Service aims to change that by building a federated ecosystem that transcends disciplines, enabling new knowledge at the intersection of science, technology, health, the environment and the humanities.

Designing a federated future

We’ve worked with the team to develop an identity system and website that defines and reflects the initiative’s values: 

• Future facing: Anticipating emerging challenges and focussed on positive long term impacts
• Ethics at our heart: Inclusive, diverse, human-centred governance
• Truly interdisciplinary: Uniting disciplines to solve the most critical and wicked global challenges

The identity draws inspiration from Fibonacci numbers and patterns as well as Alan Turing’s work on morphogenesis and even the use of flower symbols in the original city federations – visual metaphors that reflect complexity, growth and natural organisation. It uses a bright, confident colour palette and strong typography to translate that thinking into an accessible, recognisable system that brings together the different research councils across the UK.

What we’re building

The website will serve as a national hub to:

• Share programme updates and events
• Announce Flexible Fund opportunities
• Post community consultations and roadmaps
• Exchange resources across disciplines

We’re designing it with the team to be clear, intuitive and accessible for everyone from policymakers to postdocs.

We’ve also developed a visual language rooted in natural and generative systems and a practical identity guide to support consistency and collaboration across the network.

How can we make national infrastructure feel less like a machine and more like a movement?

How do we show that computing isn’t just technical, but cultural – a place where collaboration shapes the future?

New knowledge is found beyond – and between – the edge of the known.

If you’re exploring the edges of science, systems or society – and wondering how design can support that work – we’d love to hear from you.