Design Thinkers Event

DesignThinkers is an annual, two-day design conference hosted by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD Ontario). Attracting over 1,000 participants, it’s Canada’s largest, most important graphic design event and provides a forum for professionals from several areas of the marketing and creative mix to listen, learn and interact with peers from across the country. We were asked to design the look for the 2008 DesignThinkers conference and to apply it to all conference materials – from invitation and marketing materials through to conference program, signage, AV presentation and even merchandise.

Built on the idea that you can tell a lot about someone by the kind of shoes they wear, our work showcased all the kinds of design industry professionals/enthusiasts there are, represented through the different shoe types that exist.

Aesthetically, this project favoured a more human, analog, lo-fi approach over ultra-digital or ultra-slick, incorporating hand-drawn elements in pencil with slick, vibrant, almost abrasive, computer-made imagery.

To further emphasize the organic, we selected raw, uncoated, pulpy paper stocks. When it came to the film component of the project, we shot everything on 8mm film. This lo-fi film was then given an ambient audio track and vivid graphic overlays and typography. It became sort of a marriage between analog and digital.