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SpiceWorld 2018

A conference designed for everything IT in the heart of Austin, TX

Client

Spiceworks

Services

Branding

Illustration

Marketing

Merch

Presentation

The Objective

Every year IT Pros from around the world travel to Austin, TX for SpiceWorld, a tech conference designed with the IT community in mind. 2017 was a banner year for the conference and we knew 2018 needed to be even bigger. The company tasked us with designing and executing a brand that would be flexible to work well in print, digital, and large form print. It needed to be high impact, for IT pros, and easy to onboard a team of short-term contractors for a two month crunch.

IT Pros travel from around the world to attend this awesome conference.
The primary inspiration for the pattern came from circuit boards.

Branding

After some moodboarding and research meetings we began to get an idea of the task ahead of us. I began working on the patterns. Much of the imagery based on circuit boards and connections. We also made a heavy use of 45 degree angles in order to keep everything feeling dynamic and energetic.

Signage

With many of the brand elements decided the team began to build out the many elements that would fill the Austin Convention Center. At this point, my primary responsibility was in signage templating. I would design a layout for signage posted throughout the conference that was then passed on to other members of the team. This included the key art for the SpiceWorld after party, which was themed "Mad Science".

Signage template and some illustrations I designed to establish a style
There was a variety of signage around the Convention Center
The pattern was brought over, but the color palette was shifted to make the party feel unique

Keynote

Once the templating was mostly covered, I was moved over to support Matt Kohn (Art Director) on the Keynote. This involved several meetings with the CEO, some VPs, and Product Owners. We were an integral part of assisting in outlining, story-boarding, and designing the Keynote Presentation and bringing this vision to life. 

The keynote set the tone of the conference, and is the CEO's main opportunity to address Spiceheads
It wasn't all business, I made sure we injected some jokes along the way

The Fun Stuff

Additionally, we launched a merch store with t-shirts, hoodies, and enamel pins. It was so fun to see all the IT Pros excited about wearing all the stuff we had worked so hard on. For my shirt design I chose to make use of the company mascot SpiceRex - an orange T-Rex. I based my design on old Godzilla illustrations and even used some cool Japanese text on the shirt.

The line seemed to go on forever, and the shirt I designed sold out on the first night
The final tshirt design
Design process of Kaiju
The pins were mostly inside jokes for the IT Community

I was utilized for my experience with Enamel Pins. A small group worked together to come up with several visual puns that we thought would play well to the community. In total, we released four limited run pins.

After SpiceWorld there was also a fifth pin designed as a gift for SpiceWorkers who volunteered at the event. They call these volunteers SpiceWarriors, so we created a lucha-style mask celebrating the warrior spirit.

In Conclusion

The team really worked well together and the brand stayed cohesive and strong even as we on-boarded new members late in the year. At the event, the attendees seemed to be having a great time, and the merch hub saw almost all of our shirts sold the first night. One night while we were at the hub, one of the founders of SpiceWorld came up to our team to tell us this was her favorite year yet. It was really encouraging to see all of the excitement around something we had all worked so hard for.

Until next year, Spiceworld

Special thanks to the rest of the team: Matt Kohn (Art Director), Andrew Baron (Copywriter), Sarah Pedregon (Designer), Ryan Vatzlavick (Designer), & Jeff Utzman (Designer)

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