University Research Park Branding
University of Arizona’s Tech Parks Arizona: “Interactive Ground” Brand
WestWordVision’s brand for Tech Parks Arizona, ‘Interactive Ground,’ was built from a deep understanding of the niche role that the research parks play in the region. The brand communicates that Tech Parks Arizona cultivates complex and often spontaneous connections among university, industry and community, ensuring that partners accomplish together more than any individual partner could accomplish alone. By offering its know-how, facilities and resources, Tech Parks Arizona provides the right conditions for technology to thrive.
Our brand for UA Tech Parks Arizona was constructed to communicate that the benefit of these synergistic regional relationships is development of more technology assets that the region delivers worldwide. WestWordVision communicated the brand through a new website, PowerPoint presentations and newsletters.
University of Arizona’s Science and Technology Innovation: “Thinking The Impossible” narrative
WestWordVision’s narrative for University of Arizona was developed to celebrate Arizona’s 100th birthday as well as the university’s more than 135 years of innovation in science and technology. Working with UA Tech Parks Arizona, we mapped the remarkable invention pathway of ten of the university’s brilliant scientists through time.
The award winning video we produced communicated UA’s position as a global scientific and technological leader that attracts brilliant individualists who collaborate across disciplines to develop and commercialize innovations impacting millions of lives in many ways. Watch the video.
Innovation Frontier Southwest: “The Desert Route to the West” regional context and asset inventory
As part of a larger contract for UA Tech Parks Arizona, WestWordVision’s research for the Innovation Frontier Southwest (IFS), begins in the mid-19th century when hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the nation’s trails to reach the West Coast in an historic human migration. WestWordVision’s event line traces the birth and evolution of today’s security and defense industry in the Innovation Frontier Southwest, a region that spans from Yuma to Tucson to Las Cruces. To understand how the region developed, we identified and interpreted major events that have shaped the development of the region’s security and defense supply chain through time.
Our research begins in the mid-19th century, when hundreds of thousands of Americans, in an historic human migration, took to the Nation’s trails to reach the West Coast. The IFS region was the desert route to the West Coast serving as a yellow brick road that crossed western Texas, southern New Mexico and southern Arizona to southern California.
Our historical context presents: 1) The region commonality, 2) The major events that have shaped the regional identity, 3) The economic operating system and 4) Data and patterns that can informed decisions based on historic knowledge.
The desert route to California became a key link in the realization of the United States’ westward expansion, offering a safer more reliable route with better weather than the more northern trails. Development of the route was inspired by the belief that the United States was better equipped than other cultures to utilize this territory by building an industrial economy. The sentiment is captured in the words of journalist Horace Greeley: “Go West, young man, go West.”
One thing was clear from the Event Line: This frontier region has many assets that have not yet been connected and leveraged. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 Turner (Frontier) Thesis—a transition event on our Event Line—explains the historical relevance of the IFS region: It is one of the last remaining frontiers and a place that is ripe for opportunity.