Draper Laboratory
Draper had just won a NASA contract to develop Positioning, Navigation, and Timing technology for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission—real, mission-critical engineering. But Draper’s brand had seldom existed as anything other than words on a page or pixels on a screen. For EP18, an internal expo meant to showcase Draper’s R&D work to the public, that was a problem: the company needed a way to make cutting-edge, highly technical work legible and credible to a general audience, and to do it through an object, not a slide deck.
What started as a request for an accurate scale model of the spacecraft concept became something closer to a branding exercise: could Draper’s visual identity, sharp, angular, defined by its caret mark, be translated into physical form rather than just applied to a surface?
Client:
Draper Laboratory
Industry:
Aerospace R&D — internal engineering expo (EP18: Engineering Possibilities 2018)
Timeline:
January – October 2018
Role:
Visual Designer — contributed ID sketch exploration, CAD development, and brand-to-form translation, collaborating with Draper’s Industrial Design team (Robert de Saint Phalle, Head of ID; Jeff Burrell, Lead Industrial Designer)
Tools:
Sketching, CAD, physical model fabrication
Key Decision
Grounding the Concept Before Designing It.
The Tension
The project asked us to do two hard things at once: represent real, mission-critical PN&T technology accurately, and translate an established brand into a form that had never existed physically before. Sketching first risked doing neither well.
The Choice
On guidance from Draper’s Head of ID to ground the concept in realism first, we spent early time on two fronts before generating options: consulting Draper’s PN&T engineers on what the model needed to represent, and researching aerospace and product design precedent to inform form direction.
The Outcome
That upfront research meant the form direction that followed wasn’t a stylistic guess. It was grounded in real technical understanding and considered precedent, not just what looked interesting on the page.
Key Decision
Letting the Brand Live in The Form, Not on It.
The Tension
A technically accurate model risked reading as a generic engineering mockup with no brand identity, while a heavily stylized one risked undermining the credibility of the real mission hardware it represented. Balance was the key.
The Choice
Real-world spacecraft constraints influenced form, while overall brand language was expressed through faceted surfacing and intentional material choices like copper, chosen as a nod to the Draper brand and for its use in the aerospace industry.
The Outcome
The model needed to prove Draper’s engineering was real, and make Draper’s brand feel physically inevitable rather than an afterthought. Faceting and material language let both happen in the same form instead of competing for attention.
Showcase 1
The Finished Object
Studio photography of the completed model, detailing the faceted form language and material palette carried through from concept to build.
Showcase 2
On Display at EP18
The model on display in Draper’s PNT experience dome, alongside the accompanying AR/technical presentation.
Outcomes
The model was well received by the public at EP18, and in the years since, following OSIRIS-REx’s successful mission, the technical details we worked to get right have held up. It remains one of the clearest examples in my portfolio of translating a brand’s visual identity into physical form rather than treating brand as a surface-level application.