“One Step Beyond” Theme for TEDxNaperville
Activities & Roles:
Graphic design research
Graphic design
Programs Used:
Adobe Illustrator
Team:
James Chesterfield
Overview
By 2018, roughly 8 years in, TEDxNaperville had grown by leaps and bounds with more attendees and more reach than ever expected. Logos of the past tended to represent what the event was or had become, but not a theme intended to show or describe what we might be or where we might go. "One Step Beyond" represents TEDxNaperville’s first true future-focused theme. It’s goal was to announce our renewed intention to spread powerful ideas, but with a new focus on launching great movements so that the future could benefit from such powerful ideas.
Concept Development
Regardless of his sincerity, Isaac Newton said that what we are comes from standing on the shoulders of those who came before. That the organization had come this far was a result of thousands of hours by hundreds of people who came before. As such, depicting a theme for moving forward actually had to pay homage to what the organization was before.
The design needed not only look futuristic, but also historic, nostalgic, and appearing as though in-development, like a futuristic blueprint of an old machine. It needed to be a journey connecting old and new. “One Step Beyond” means “future”, but it has to be more than that. It has to be about the journey from the past to the future as well.
Visual Development
Initial inspiration was actually pulled from the design of the Star Trek Enterprise opening sequence. The design is based off a 19th century star chart and was meant to look like something out of Leonardo’s workshop. The radial pattern and rings represent an annual “clock” with months and hours across which the stars travel. The dotted lines represent stellar paths. I added minor flourishes to create something that looked like a blueprint or map while also being minimal and modern.
A second inspiration came from a kind of philosophy I developed for this theme, which was that every idea starts as a journey to an uncharted place - either to the center ourselves or the edges of possibility. The design is really based on those journey, represented here by those stellar paths. The paths represent the journeys of ideas, lives, or perceptions. The concentric circles represent levels of acceptance or awareness of those ideas, or levels of that journey.
Typeface: Lombok by Alexandre Pietra (with added stroke)
Design progression of the theme logo, starting with testing different fonts and stylings and moving towards the design of the radial start chart.