What’s Taking Form?
Branding, animation, codeRecently, a study out of the MIT Media Lab exploring the effects of large language model use on memory retention went massively viral before it had been peer reviewed. The Lab's desire to capitalize on its virality stood in opposition to its typical avoidance of promoting non-peer-reviewed research, posing a genuine institutional question: how do you share and promote research that is urgent and compelling without misrepresenting where it stands in the scientific process? The answer became What's Taking Form?, a video series designed to create a framework for sharing early, speculative, and playful Media Lab research with honesty and a light touch, letting audiences know that what they're watching is still very much in formation.
The name, arrived at after two days of intensive brainstorming, acronyms to WTF, which felt right for a place like MIT, where the work is often genuinely surprising and the culture appreciates a well-placed acronym. The typographic identity is built around Visual by AllCaps Studio, a typeface whose pixelated grid exterior gives way to smooth, rounded interior letter forms, a quality that felt formally right for work that is still finding its shape. With zero budget and roughly one week, I built a system of animated typographic video outros using the open source software Visual Studio Code and AI coding assistance, developing four distinct approaches inspired in part by the visual language of classic PBS. What's Taking Form launched on Pi Day. The first episode featured a researcher exploring the use of DNA as a means of sustainable memory storage, which felt like an appropriate beginning.
+ Branding + animation: Olivia Verdugo
+ Video: Jimmy Day
+ Code assistants: Chat GPT + Claude
+ Typeface used: Visual by AllCaps Studio
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Watch the first WTF, below, or visit the MIT Media Lab on Youtube to see more
© 2026 Olivia S Verdugo