ABU DHABI INVESTMENT AUTHORITY
Jumping on a plane to work with the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund
📍 ABU DHABI
PROJECT: WEB DESIGN
Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds. They commissioned S1T2 to create a unique website that would attract the best minds globally, without revealing too much of the inner workings of a brand that is both discreet and highly respected.
ROLE: LEAD DESIGNER
This was a unique experience for me. Within my first weeks of moving to Australia, I was flown to Sydney and then Abu Dhabi to take part in the discovery workshop, before officially starting my role as a designer and leading this project under Story 1st Technology 2nd.
READ THE S1T2 CASE STUDY
This case study is written from my perspective focussing on design, its process, craft and outcomes. S1T2 has a full case study about the wider project from content to technology which you can read here. For Francisco’s design process stay right here.
S1T2 CASE STUDY The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority operates at immense scale and prestige, playing a critical role in shaping the long-term vision and sustainability ambitions of its nation. Beyond being a global investment organisation, the brand required careful navigation of perception both internally and on the world stage. We spent five days in Abu Dhabi working with stakeholders from across the business through a series of workshops to help shape the brand vision.
Inspired by Abu Dhabi
This project marked my first role as a designer in Australia and took me directly to the city itself. Our task as a team was to capture the balance between Islamic tradition and modern design, seen across the architecture, cultural landmarks, and the city’s clean white forms set against the desert landscape. The challenge was translating that atmosphere into a digital experience, shaping a website that represented Abu Dhabi to the world.
Story 1st
This was my first project with S1T2 and my introduction to their philosophy of Story First, Technology Second. The process was initially intimidating, with the client already aligned around a strong creative direction shaped through abstract mood boards and language that sold the feeling of the work before any interface design existed. That set a clear challenge for me as a designer, translating emotion and narrative into purposeful UI design without losing the intent behind the story.
Technology 2nd
This is where the Technology Second philosophy came to life. Seeing the work of S1T2’s developers firsthand revealed a level of quality, experimentation, and creative ambition that matched the strength of the story. Guided by the creative direction, the team produced geometric forms that responded to light, movement, and cursor interaction, turning technical execution into a design language of its own. The combination of narrative intent and expressive technical craft resulted in a uniquely immersive outcome for the client.
Limitless art direction
With a clear brand story and the support of experimental front end developers, the art direction drew directly from Abu Dhabi’s environment, blending sandy desert tones into the white canvas of the website. Using the original engineering drawings of the tessellating roof from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, we created a top down desert landscape that responded to cursor movement, setting the atmosphere and visual foundation across the site.
A truely unique interactive website
The final website was something I could only have imagined at the beginning of the project. The background became fully interactive, responding to cursor movement and revealing a subtle transition from sandy tones into white. The site is experienced as a top down desert landscape, where navigating the content feels like moving laterally through space, and scrolling causes the environment to gently pan. On the home page, tessellating triangles rise and connect to tell stories, eventually revealing the Abu Dhabi landscape itself. Cinemagraphs were used to introduce a sense of timeless motion into the photography, and the website remains in use and well regarded today.