TEDxUofT

Concepts and designs for the University of Toronto's independently organized TED conference

TEDxUofT is the University of Toronto's independently organised TED event featuring students and professors from all three campuses as speakers and performers. The duties of the design team include developing graphics to support each year's theme and working alongside the marketing team to announce speakers and ticket sales in the lead-up to the conference.

For 2017's theme "Open", we wanted to create a marketing campaign that could incorporate elements of "open source" and "open collaboration". One idea was putting up a series of interactive posters around campus with event details, the TEDxUofT logo, and a unique graphic that would require audience input to create our visual "O" motif. These posters would experiment with different mediums and engage students across multiple disciplines. In addition to the three examples above, other ideas ranged from a simple circular cork board for pinning ideas on in the Rotman Commerce basement to a more complex origami lotus assembled from looseleaf sheets with wellness advice written by students - in partnership with U of T's Health and Wellness Centre - which would be collected before the conference and later taken apart petal by petal to be read by attendants during intermission.

In the end, these posters were too logistically difficult to execute. The TEDx design team did decide on a collection of O-shaped graphics we could piece together into eye-catching animations for social media posts and use individually in name tag, clothing, and set designs.

Ticket sales announcement.

Mockups of laser-cut name tags.

Conference date announcement.

Despite having no background in animation, my work for TEDxUofT has very often involved creating GIFs and videos. Working with fellow designer Linda Huang's illustrations, my earlier contributions to TEDxUofT 2016: EDGE include these countdown animations featuring our speakers. The one thing I can take credit for is animating MC Alan Cross's vinyl record toss though even that was, of course, taken from Shaun of the Dead.