Now What? Design Conference
Core77 is a leading publication and resource for industrial designers. With an audience of students through seasoned professionals, Core77 tracks design news, shares portfolios, showcases designers, studios, schools and companies. They also host lectures, parties, exhibits, and (once a year) have a huge design conference. That’s where we come in.
The crew at Core77 hit up the studio, to design everything for their 2018 conference. The theme this year was “Now What? Launching and Growing Your Creative Business”. In addition to this topic being one of personal interest (after all, we also launched and grew a creative business) it was relevant to many designers today. We thought the idea of merging solid business planning with starting a creative practice created a cool a juxtaposition. It’s almost like spreadsheets and word documents were mashed up with vibrant colors and dope typography. So that’s what we did.
The primary mark is a mashup of a rather typical serif typeface (boring!), and zig-zag, one that is much more flamboyant and zanny (rad!). They intersect and wind around one another, creating a nice visual metaphor for the conference itself. The color palette is based on paper stock you might find around an office–or at your local FedEx Office or Staples. The eyeball motif randomly emerged, when we overlaid two question marks. So, we just sort of went with it, and treated it like a mascot of the conference.
It all came together at the event. Hosted at the very cool A/D/O in Brooklyn, a sold out crowd of over 250 people gathered to see 15 high-profile presenters speak about different facets of creative business. The design system looked killer on everything from swag bags to signage, from huge monitors to stickers, and on apparel and programs. It actually went over so well, that we’ll be working with Core77 again next year, on their 2019 conference. Now how’s that for growing our creative business.
