300 Seconds // Background and Brief

Background:
One of my favourite projects from the Level 5 responsive module was producing branding for a startup series of technology talks called 300 seconds. These talks were aimed at providing a solution for the lack of women talking at technology conferences, a real problem that also exists in other knowledge industry sectors. The two main identified reasons given for this were that most speakers are chosen because they have spoken before, and that some women lack the experience necessary to build confidence to put themselves forward for these events. 300 seconds aims to tackle this by having speakers talk for just 5 minutes on a topic of their choice. This gives them a platform to test out new material infront of an audience and also gives them proven event speaking experience which can be used to help find new opportunities to speak. Here was the brand I designed for them in second year:

In the year since, the events have been a huge success, being hosted by Facebook, The Guardian, BBC and Mozilla. As it has spread so rapidly, there needed to be a change to the identity to make space for placenames e.g. 300 seconds Manchester, or 300 Seconds Google. This was a particular challenge to implement without moving too far away from the original brand.There has been overwhelming response for others to run their own 300 Seconds events and so a toolkit was required to give out to partners. This would include a choice of 4 colour varients of the logo (and a move away from the pink which is seen as too feminine), type guidelines and a position for the event name or place.

Here are some photos from previous events:

300 Seconds Brief
(collaboration with Andy Foster)

Background:

300 seconds is a series of technology talks and events attempting to deal with the problem of underrepresentation of women at technology and digital conferences. It is based on the idea that ‘Standing up in front of an audience for half an hour can be daunting even to the seasoned pro. But five minutes – just 300 seconds – well, that’s not so hard, is it?’. By giving new speakers the opportunity to test material in front of an audience, they can help build both experience and confidence which can help speakers to move on the other events in the future. Previous events have been hosted by Facebook, the guardian, BBC and Mozilla.

Concise Brief:
In light of the success of 300 seconds, and requests by others to franchise the model, refresh the identity to provide multiple colour options and a space to include the location or host.

Brief:
We’d like to make the 300 Seconds logo and artwork available as a toolkit
for partner events. We need a playbook and set of downloads, which should include The logo in a set of contrast colours (we’d like to move away from using only pink and offer maybe a choice of 4), Typography (font, size, positioning), Positioning of location text - we’d like to be able to add the name of the event alongside the logo, eg Salford or BBC.

Concept:
Iterate the existing logo to include a ‘location bar’, remove the pink option of colours and replace with 4 contrasting options. Try to to retain the speech theme of the original logo and create a format that will work for a variety of different events in the future.
Tone of Voice:
Professional Technology Approachable