D4D Conference
collaborative website redesign allowing attendees to upload artwork, putting their unique touch on the conference website presence. Logo, banner, wayfinding and merchandise design. Collaboration with virtual teams, volunteers and leadership.
Design4Drupal Conference
Create a conference brand identity emphasizing user-submitted artwork.
Design 4 Drupal (D4D) is a leading-edge web design and Drupal development conference held annually at MIT's Strata Center in Cambridge, Boston. D4D had exploded in popularity in recent years. Their leadership teams wanted to step up the conference branding in order to continue attracting more visual designers to an otherwise technology-driven group.
Working with the awesome team at Design 4 Drupal Boston, Rubic ran with their concept to design a site and brand around attendee-submitted artwork and photography. Virtually overnight, Rubic created a bold, simple set of logos, brand marks and guidelines for application on conference materials. We produced files and layouts for conference programs, schedule/orientation handouts, a full design and art direction for the annual website presence.
“The conference teams working on the website, programming and print collaterals never met face-to-face. Rubic developed, designed and approved a new brand and web presence remotely using email, phone and online tools like GoogleDocs and Basecamp.”
Collaborating remotely with other designers, writers and Drupal developers, Rubic helped produce a sold-out conference with cool swag to help build clout for future years. Virtually every attendee uploaded their own artwork after registering online for the conference. On refresh, web pages displayed user-submitted art along with a credit line by the author/attendee.
Attendees took pride in seeing their art on the website and its random and ever-changing appeal kept the website presence fresh and edgy - perfect for a web design community. A pleasant surprise on the day of the conference, since we included credit lines and links from submitted art to user profiles, many attendees engaged in complimenting and making friends over each other's art.
With only a short window of time to design a new brand and extend the look across a new Drupal website, conference print, signage and swag, Rubic worked quickly to develop several unique creative directions. With feedback from conference teams and attendees we finalized the look and feel for the new brand and implemented the new design across all conference materials in time for the big event.