Kinly - London Stock Exchange - The Art of Productivity
When Art Becomes Infrastructure
Observatory and artist Ben Sheppee were commissioned by global AV integrator Kinly to create a bespoke artwork to unify every LED screen inside the London Stock Exchange. The piece became the centrepiece of a PR campaign exploring how art and visual design drive workplace productivity. The campaign won Gold for B2B Campaign of the Year at the PR Moment Awards 2026.
🏆 Gold — B2B Campaign of the Year
PR Moment Awards 2026
THE BREIF
Can art measurably improve how people work?
Kinly, a global AV integration company, had commissioned original research surveying 1,000 UK office workers and 425 enterprise AV professionals on the relationship between workplace design, visual environment, and productivity. The data was compelling: Van Gogh's Starry Night improved productivity in 38% of participants; 77% of companies said beautiful workspaces boost staff output; and 46% of Gen Z workers said an uninspiring office would make them consider quitting.
But data alone wasn't enough. Kinly needed to demonstrate the thesis — not just present it. They wanted to stage an immersive experience at the London Stock Exchange that would transform its existing screen infrastructure into a living argument for art in the workplace. They needed an artist and a studio that could deliver across both domains: fine art credibility and commercial-grade multi-screen production.
THE WORK
Workflow — a series piece adapted for the London Stock Exchange
The visual centrepiece was a bespoke artwork titled Workflow — derived from Ben Sheppee's ongoing Lucid series of fluid typographic animations. Text drawn from Kinly's research findings on workplace productivity, creativity and wellbeing was composed into flowing, undulating forms that moved organically across screens. Words and sentences became landscape — readable at moments, abstract at others, always in motion.
The critical challenge was continuity. The London Stock Exchange has LED screens of varying sizes and resolutions spread across multiple floors — reception, presenter walls, balcony displays, theatre screens, gallery monitors, studio walls, forum screens, terrace LED walls, and a cube display. The artwork had to flow seamlessly across all of them as a single, unified visual experience, despite each output requiring a different resolution, aspect ratio and orientation.
Attendees at Kinly's "Inspire" event were immersed in the artwork as they moved through the building — from the reception through presentation spaces, a curated physical art gallery, and guided audio tours that connected the research findings to the visual experience surrounding them.
CREATIVE APPROACH
Where fine art practice meets commercial delivery
Fluid Typography Series
Research as Raw Material
Workflow is rooted in Sheppee's ongoing "Lucid" series — fluid text animations where language becomes topography. Words flow like water, pooling into legibility before dissolving back into abstract form. The series has been shown at the London Stock Exchange, Aures London, and in Times Square, New York. For Kinly, the text source was drawn directly from the Art of Productivity research paper — making the artwork a literal embodiment of the campaign's thesis.
Key findings, provocative statistics and questions from the research — "Can art influence productivity?", "What does the future of workplace technology look like?" — were woven into the fluid typography. The content wasn't decoration; it was the artwork's substance. As visitors watched the animations flow across screens, they were reading the research unconsciously.
Dual Identity
Kinly Brand Integration
This project sat at the precise intersection of Observatory's two practices: fine art and commercial animation. The work needed to function as a credible gallery artwork — with Sheppee's artist profile, exhibition history (Tate Britain, SFMOMA, Serpentine) and collaboration with Shantell Martin providing the cultural weight — while also being a precisely engineered multi-screen deliverable on a commercial deadline.
Subtle blue accents drawn from Kinly's brand identity were threaded through the otherwise monochrome typography — appearing as punctuation marks or isolated characters within the flowing text. The Kinly "Inspire | Art of Productivity" branding appeared alongside the questions animation, connecting the typographic art to the campaign framework without compromising the visual integrity of the piece.
IMPACT
The research became the artwork. The artwork proved the research.
The Art of Productivity campaign demonstrated its own thesis. By transforming the London Stock Exchange's screens from functional infrastructure into a curated art experience, Kinly showed — not just told — their clients how visual design changes the way a workspace feels and performs. Attendees experienced the research physically as they moved through the building, surrounded by the flowing text of the very findings being discussed in the presentations.
"The campaign was brought to life through a powerful collaboration between Observatory Design and artist Ben Sheppee, using the London Stock Exchange Group's iconic digital screen real estate to translate key research findings into a lucid, text-based animation."
PR Moment Awards
SCREEN MAP
One artwork. Ten resolutions. Multiple floors.
Each screen in the London Stock Exchange required its own export — a unique crop and resolution of the Workflow animation, designed to feel continuous as visitors moved between spaces.
Deliverables
Beyond the screens
Workflow Animation
Speaker Talk
The hero artwork — a continuous fluid typographic animation exported at 12 different resolutions and aspect ratios, designed to flow seamlessly across every LED surface in the London Stock Exchange. Both dark (white on black) and inverted (black on white) versions were produced.
Ben Sheppee delivered a presentation at the Inspire event on the intersection of art, technology and workplace design — drawing on his practice across 293 alphabets, his exhibition history, and his dual career as both fine artist and commercial animation director.
Campaign Visual Identity
Social Media Content
Stills and crops from the Workflow animation became the key visual for the entire Art of Productivity campaign — used in the research report, media outreach, social content, and event collateral. The artwork was the brand.
A companion piece where individual letters floated in space, gradually assembling into the six key questions from the research paper. Layered over the fluid text backgrounds, these created moments of revelation as scattered typography resolved into legible provocations.
TECHNICAL
Multi-resolution, multi-floor, single artwork
Resolution Mapping
Dual Polarity
12 unique exports from a single master animation — ranging from the square 1360×1360 Cube to ultra-wide 7680×1080 reception screens. Each output was cropped and timed to maintain visual continuity across floors.
Both dark-on-light and light-on-dark versions of the Workflow animation were produced — allowing content to adapt to different ambient light conditions and screen contexts within the same building.
Text as Fluid Dynamics
Venue Integration
The Lucid series technique uses text treated through fluid simulation — words retain their letterforms but move through space with organic, water-like behaviour. The animation is generative in character but precisely art-directed for each output.
Content was delivered to work within the London Stock Exchange's existing AV infrastructure — Kinly's own domain. The artwork needed to perform on screens originally designed for financial data, proving that the same hardware can serve a fundamentally different purpose.