In a world racing against time to find sustainable climate solutions, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s “Green Future Fellowships” stands as a beacon for budding innovators. With £150 million in government funding on the line, Shape History was tasked with creating a campaign to inspire brilliant minds to turn visionary ideas into reality.
Joe Slawinski, Creative at Shape History, takes us behind the scenes to reveal the campaign’s journey – from the first spark of inspiration to AI-powered visuals that bridge ambition with impact. This is the story of what it takes to ignite change, one idea at a time.
What was the brief?
With £150 million in government funding to help find breakthrough climate solutions, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) enlisted Shape History to get the word out about their new ‘Green Future Fellowships’ to future innovators.
What’s the main message of this project and why does it matter?
Many fellowships in this space fund great research and development, but that funding doesn’t always lead to a finished and tangible innovation that has a world-changing impact.
What’s different about Green Future Fellowships is that every idea and project is taken on with the intention to see it through to the finished thing – a world-changing and innovative engineering solution that the market will actually take up.
Can you describe the creative spark or inspiration behind the initial concept? Was there a specific moment or insight that ignited the idea?
We asked ourselves, “What’s the thing that drives every innovator on Earth?”, and the answer was pretty obvious. As creatives – how often are we pained to see one of our (clearly) great ideas die before it sees the light of day? Just imagine how many innovative and world-changing ideas must remain as sketches stuffed in bottom drawers or prototypes that never left the lab.
Every innovator wants to see their idea come to life, to see it benefit society. This was about inspiring them to see how their idea could actually become the finished article – how it could actually change the world. And when a lot of fellowships out there don’t provide enough time and funding for a project to reach completion, this was clearly the nugget we were after.
How long did it take from inception to delivery?
About two to three months.
What was the biggest challenge during production? How did you overcome it?
How do you visualise the innovative climate solutions of the future when they’ve not even been created or scaled into the market yet? If us guys at Shape History could tell you exactly what they are going to look like, then we should probably be applying for the fellowship ourselves.
Obviously, we couldn’t know exactly what the innovations would be. But we didn’t have to show them, we just had to inspire innovators to see that the amazing thing they’re working on right now could become real with the help of Green Future Fellowships.
So, we took an abstract approach, using AI to create surreal images that connected the long, challenging innovation process to that final product moment innovators often dream about.
Taking some of the climate innovation iconography we all know and love – wind farms, electric cars, green cityscapes – we showed them bursting into reality out of sketchbooks and monitors, and in one case, showed a tree growing out of a microchip. This built the link between an innovative idea and its real-world impact – thankfully, we’re leaving it up to the innovators themselves to work out the stuff in between!
What is one funny or notable thing that happened during production?
AI is a great tool, but there’s often some trial and error. When we asked it to show us an image of an electric car, nine times out of ten we’d get a picture of some sci-fi-esque metallic beast that was only fit for the background wallpaper of a teenage boy’s phone. We also learned pretty quickly that it was best to avoid any AI-generated innovators using their hands (if you know, you know).
How did you ensure that the concept aligned with the brand's values, goals, and target audience?
We were working within the brand of a technical academic institution, and while our concept was about breathing life into ideas, it needed to feel professional and slick, rather than overly 'creative'.
So we combined our surreal AI imagery with gradients and shapes in RAE’s style to make sure it still felt cohesive and didn’t lose any of the authority and gravitas associated with the brand.
What do you hope it achieves for the brand?
We want brilliant minds to see our campaign, feel inspired to apply, and, in a few years, have created some of the world-changing technologies we need to tackle the climate crisis. Then, the Royal Academy of Engineering can proudly say that a Green Future Fellow helped make it happen.
Credit list for the work?
Creatives:
- Joe Slawinski (copy)
- Anya Parakh (art direction)
- Joel Harvey (motion design & editing)
- Zoë Dawson (creative director)
Strategists:
- Haseeb Qureshi, senior strategy executive
- Leila Hashemi, Associate Strategy Director
Partner – Royal Academy of Engineering
