Design Spinoff
Most design events feel the same with a stage, slides, a keynote, everyone claps, and leaves. I and Emmanuel wanted to have intimate conversations with actual leaders and builders in the community.
Context
This was for Sections, a community for senior digital designers in Nigeria. The goal was to get senior design leaders in a room talking honestly about real challenges in the industry so that conversation could reach designers coming up behind them.
We decided to design the set like a live podcast and later share that with the world, with two speakers, one host, one conversation in a small room that made people want to talk without holding back. It was about getting designers to think beyond their own work, to how that work affects the industry around them.
The Brand Direction
For the design direction, I played around the idea of spread and dialogue. Imagine 50 senior designers talking in one room but their discussion doesn't stay in that room, it spreads. High concentration in the middle, dispersing outward, further stressing the 'change happens from top to bottom' idea.
I applied some dynamism to the logomark with the stretched letters in the wordmark first, for balance and then I thought, we would have different people with different experiences, and personalities and imperfections too, all in one shared space as a collective. Colour was electric green, orange, yellow, black with the African touch, vibrant, energetic and exciting enough for more people to want to get in.
I led the whole thing, from concept, brand system, layout, every touchpoint at the event. On event day, I wanted something flat to feel dimensional in a real room. So I tested, printed, adjusted until it worked physically, not just on a screen.
This was a successful event, the room was full. People connected with it online too, with how open the conversations felt.
