In 2015, Overdrive Design Limited developed for the conference the campaign “Converge. Inspire. Transform.” The visual theme focuses on the speakers, attendees, points of data and layers of information. The main image, an 8’ acrylic sculpture, represents a SuperSpeaker made out of the idea of different people with different backgrounds, opinions and skills coming together in one location, at one point in time, that would be memorable. To translate the concept on different applications and formats, different materials, papers and print techniques were used throughout the campaign.

In 2015, Overdrive Design Limited developed for the DesignThinkers conference the campaign “Converge. Inspire. Transform.” The visual theme focuses on the speakers, attendees, points of data and layers of information. The main image, an 8’ acrylic sculpture, represents a SuperSpeaker made out of the idea of different people with different backgrounds, opinions and skills coming together in one location, at one point in time, that would be memorable.

THE VIDEO:
The video was created with the express purpose of revealing the story behind the conference. Data, images of the speakers and beautiful footage of the sculpture - the centrepiece os the branding - are juxtaposed throughout the video representing the overall concepts of the visual identity. The story is built using light visuals, clean contemplative music and soft movements to a reveal the sculpture in its entirety.

THE VISUAL FOCUS:
One of the two main elements featured in the video is the centrepiece of the conference’s branding, an 8’ acrylic sculpture, representing a SuperSpeaker made out of the idea of different people with different backgrounds, opinions and skills coming together. The front view appears as a recognizable human face and from the side, the profile of a human head and shoulders. By viewing the sculpture at angles other than straight on, the form dissolved into something abstract, resembling bits of data, bar charts or pixels.

The sculpture itself was digitally printed on 44 pieces of 3/8” acrylic. Each piece was then hand drilled, epoxied and fastened to fishing line via miniature hardware. The acrylic strips then had coloured side pieces attached and were suspended from an acrylic laser drilled ceiling plate attached to the top of the framework.

THE SPEAKER PHOTOGRAPHY:
The second main element featured in the video are the speakers attending the conference, which turned out to be one of the biggest challenges of the branding. The images needed to look like they belonged to a family, but they also needed to be strong as stand alones. As well, they needed to relate back to the SuperSpeaker sculpture and to a “sum of its pieces” concept. The biggest roadblock to achieving this was inconsistency in source material with regards to quality, size, colour and composition.

The solution offered no hope of shortcuts: 48 speaker portraits were converted to black and white, manually adjusted in terms of tones, highlights and shadows, then clipped so white backgrounds could be applied, then cropped so that the proportions of heads and shoulders were comparable, then printed and surgically sliced into “tiny little strips with x-acto knives”, hand assembled and glued back together on substrate, then taped to a wall and photographed, then finally brought back on the computer where a final cleanup was applied.

The conference brought together visionary designers and strategic thinkers from across North America to discuss design and creative processes, from in-house management strategies to working with clients, from type design to poster design, from Buzzfeed to Vanity Fair.

In the end, the “Converge. Inspire. Transform.” campaign turned out to be incredibly successful, inspiring a record-breaking attendance with more than 2,000 participants, and making DesignThinkers 2015 by far the largest gathering of creative professionals the Association has ever hosted.