Overview

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the height of political and social tensions in the U.S., TEDxNaperville sought to uncover the signs of strength that were happening all around us, but were simply overshadowed by anxiety and doubt constantly streaming across media outlets.

My job as lead designer would be to build a logo and theme system that was visually stunning, but also filled with deep meanings around hope, grassroots activism, local community, and collective strength.

Concept Development

The design is based loosely on an event that occurred in Naperville, IL during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations where boarded up businesses became de facto poster boards for love letters from young people in support of the movement. As they put up paper hearts, other community members came by and tore them down, highlighting the political and social divide.

From a personal (not organizational) perspective, this theme design was a show of support for those young people and to show how restyling something as symbolically divisive as a wall can in fact make it a symbol for unity rather than division, strength rather than separation.

Visual Development

Design began with a mood board (also know as a dream board) - a collection of designs, styles, colors, and typography that embodied the feelings of what the organizing team wanted to express in the theme. We wanted to intermingle the ideas of community, hidden strength, messiness, and the ad hoc nature of grassroots work.

Our team immediately gravitated towards design elements like the brick wall and graffiti to help display these ideas. From there, I selected a typeface that felt like graffiti and reinforced it with splashes of color that looked like paint thrown against a wall. Through them, I sought to embody the unrefined but beautiful work of grassroots and community organization.

Typeface: The Stamshons Demo regular (with 6% rise) by Sabrcreative Studio

High-speed video (5:30) of the TEDxNaperville 2020 theme design process. The video doesn’t show the pre-work, research, and creation of the mood board. Video music courtesy of JBlanked licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Final theme design on black background, often used for web or marketing purposes.

Final theme design on white background, often used for physical marketing like t-shirts.

An alternate white version with added smaller “love letters” of strength.

Style Guide

As the lead designer for the organization, I often lack the time to create designs for daily use, such as social postings, posters, smaller cards, or newsletters. So, to empower other department leads to use my design work in their own way, I created a very basic style guide, as well as provided everyone with a comprehensive content package for any use. This package included all design files and individual design components in multiple formats for anyone to use with any design software.

You can view this basic style guide here.