SmartQuart
What is SmartQuart?
SmartQuart was Germany's first ‘real-world laboratory for the energy transition’ – a large-scale, multi-faceted practical experiment: from 2020 to 2025, E.ON, RWTH Aachen University and other consortium partners tested how the energy transition can be implemented in practice at three locations.
At the end of the project, storyboard summarised the results of this flagship project in a creative final report. To this end, complex energy topics were presented in a journalistic style and made understandable for a specialist audience.
Tasks
- Content creation
- Art direction (layout & design)
- Project management
Hard facts
- How often? One-off publication
- Distribution: Postal dispatch to project partners and selected recipients from the fields of politics, business and science
Implementation
The 24-page final report summarises the results of the SmartQuart ‘real-world laboratory’ for a specialist audience – presented in a journalistic style, with clear language and a high proportion of visual elements. storyboard developed the visual concept, texts and infographics on topics such as hydrogen infrastructure, LowEx heating networks and digital district control.
The newspaper was published in print in December 2025 and is available as an e-paper (in German) on the website of E.ON subsidiary Westenergie AG.
The creative final report is structured around the three SmartQuart locations: The electric neighbourhood of Bedburg shows how a resource-saving settlement in a rural area works. The digital urban neighbourhood of Essen highlights the challenges of decarbonisation in existing buildings. The hydrogen neighbourhood of Kaisersesch documents the construction of the first municipal hydrogen network in Germany. Another chapter explains the systemic interconnection of the three neighbourhoods – and the question of how networked energy communities can contribute to stabilising the electricity grid in the future.
Browse through the SmartQuart project completion report here:
Tasks
- Creation of a cover collage
- Design & creation of new infographics
- Refresh & further development of existing infographics
Implementation
The graphics team developed a collage for the cover of the SmartQuart newspaper that visually conveys the connection between city and countryside. In addition, several infographics were newly created and revised. They summarise technical and systemic relationships – from the energy supply of the individual neighbourhoods to the networking of all three locations in a systemic network.
