WSJ Future of Everything Festival theme identities
We created a dynamic and flexible identity system for The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival.
The system had to represent a huge breadth of content artfully and literally, flex across channels, and create a platform for subsequent festivals.
Role: creative strategy, concept development
CD: Ben Shuttes
ACD, Design: Adriana Torres, Chris Ritchie
ACD, Copy: Dave Zuckerman
Art Directors: Ani Montileone, Bronson Stamp, Eric Schroeder
Animators: Hayeon Kim, Accept & Proceed
Future of Everything Festival Identity:
strategy and
creative approach
Where we started
For its second year, The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything Festival needed a visual language that spoke to brand values (futurism, inspiration, innovation) and content themes (tech, culture, style, money, and health).
We created key art inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, commissioning 3D artists to create abstract worlds that embodied the festival’s themes.
The orbs were beautiful and on-brand. But they were too abstract to represent content and not flexible enough to create a comprehensive identity across all our comms.
Where we went
To solve those challenges, we sought an identity that could represent a breadth of content, flex across channels, and create a platform for later festivals.
We were inspired by the flexibility and modularity of the Channel 4 identity system and the Brit Awards statuettes, refreshed and redesigned every year but never losing their signature shape.
Where we landed
Our solution was a logo mark that compacts the name into an acronym in just two shapes, containing the festival’s identity but also offering a vast canvas for themes and ideas.
The mark functions both as a logo and an identity system.
And it’s easily applied across OOH, print, email and critically an array of digital display sizes.
Covid denied us the opportunity to launch with our first animations, created by Accept+Proceed, but the mark eventually came to life.
