Adaptive Lab is a design consultancy with a strong focus on the importance of culture - both internally and with clients. They asked me to help them make a book that would both define and support their culture - both for the current team as well as potential future hires and clients.
What is it
'The book of Awesome' aimed to capture Adaptive Labs processes, philosophy and values in one place - a cultural artefact. Framed as a futurespective, the book is set one year into the future freeing the content from the need to necessarily be accurate!
The approach
I designed a workshop to generate the bulk of the content - getting the team to think about the kind of work they'd like to be doing, in conjunction with identifying future trends as well as how the company values support the way they get work done.
Taking the raw workshop materials I worked with different team members to turn the outputs into 'stories' for the book.
The results
Aside from uncovering a shared obsession with zombie invasions, the process of building the book uncovered areas where the values weren't totally clear to the team. And working up the 'imaginary' projects showed a shared ambition to use design to connect people - embracing both globalisation and decentralisation.
As an artefact, the book continues to evolve.