This project won the “Branding/Large Format Innovation” Award for the 2019 Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) In-House Design Awards
Introduction
The 2018 annual general meeting (AGM) at IBI Group was not your ordinary conference table assembly with shareholders and investors. Along with the usual announcements, the marketing team decided to co-host the AGM with the CEO’s presentation on a new firm wide strategic plan and with IBI’s technology product showcase in the lobby of its Toronto headquarters.
The strategic plan emphasizes leveraging existing and new technologies to grow the core business and future-proof the firm through new business models, products and services.
Task
With technology at the forefront of IBI’s future and with the showcase of new products, the event had to be forward-looking in nature. Working with the Global Graphic Design Lead, I was tasked with branding the event with the goal to publicize and promote the company’s new direction.
We decided to implement large scale environmental graphics to create a unique branded environment that would speak to the company’s future-oriented vision. I designed about 50+ mockup ideas that utilized elements from our newly designed brand assets that were already aesthetically and conceptually aligned with the future of the company. I worked closely with a third party signage company to coordinate the design specifications, materials, and installations of the graphics.
Here are some mockups I worked on.
Ideation and Execution
Boiling the mockups down to one or two designs was a tough task, but our decisions were justified. Since the event was hosted in Toronto and IBI Group boasts 60+ offices worldwide, we sought to include some sort of nod to the rest of the global team. The dotted pattern map was just that and our employees and clients were already used to the design due to its use in proposals and other documents.
To symbolize the essence of the event and new strategic plan, I decided to use a photo we had taken of a woman wearing a virtual reality headset. One of the products we were showcasing, and certainly the most popular and anticipated, was the virtual reality booth where people could interact with an environment using a headset and controllers. The image itself also had the woman placing her hands on the headset reminiscent of someone looking through binoculars. With these considerations in mind, the virtual reality image was an apt symbol for what this event represented. To fuse both images together, I made the photo into a halftone graphic to match the dotted map and juxtaposed them to make it seem like the woman was seeing the world through a technological lens.
The resulting effect is quite mesmerizing in person, but its main purpose was to align itself with IBI’s new brand strategy. It also captured the aura of the event and allowed visitors to experience IBI’s new vision in a large scale format. The branded event was one of the first instances of IBI’s pivot to a smarter urban future.
Here is a video I helped produce that showcases the event and the graphics. I worked on all the graphics for the video, the editing, and shot some of the footage.
Slightly modified, the graphic would go on to become a staple in brand collateral. The environmental graphics were due to stay in place for two weeks, but with the success of the event (in which another product showcase followed soon after), they were extended to stay up for a further year.
“The [event] was amazing today. It truly was. I’ve never seen this buzz within IBI”