TEDx Jersey City

As an independent freelance designer, I was hired by TEDx Jersey City to create event branding that would represent the energy of their fourth season when so many things were possible and would capture the engagement and liveliness of the community that is Jersey City. 

In addition to the audience members and great speakers, there was also a professional production crew on site for the event. The aim was to attract a growing community of people to TEDx Jersey City. The direct client was the lead organizer who had a vision for what she wanted to say about this fourth event. 

I sat down with the organizer to talk through the event theme for that year. I asked questions to make sure that I understood the theme clearly, and threw out an idea or two to see if I was thinking in the same general direction. I designed three ideas—Urban, Reveal & Energy—that examined a different aspect of the word GO, the theme of the event. I presented the ideas to the client and Reveal was chosen.

Reveal deals with the peculiarity of the word go. The word doesn’t really come to life until another word is added to it. I wrote down as many word pairings that I could think of. Inspired by the idea of how words can define us, I started to play with imagery of a face being revealed by words. 

I started thinking about the speeches and what words could be paired with the word go that would represent the topics. I used these pairings for title cards that were projected on the screen as the speakers walked on the stage.

What would I have done differently?

If we had had a larger budget, I would have extended the idea with the use of multiple faces that represent the diversity of ideas that is TED: young, old, different ethnicities. Ideas Worth Spreading. We also could have done photoshoots of the speakers and used their faces in social media campaigns announcing their speeches. The words defining their faces could have been key words from their speeches.