Support Summit 2020

What I worked on:

Art Direction | Design | Illustration | Motion Design | Brand

Giving life to our first virtual event.

As we all know, 2020 was the year of the pandemic and with it came virtual events. Support Summit 2020 was our first introduction to this format. One of the biggest guiding stars at Shopify is to Thrive on Change and with Support Summit 2020 we wanted to make sure that our attendees felt like they could still thrive, even when having to stay at home.

While developing the brand, I tried to think about where my home feels like it has the most life and how that could act as a metaphor for having to thrive even in the harshest of conditions. Coincidently, I had also just started learning about various plant species that thrive on the lands once burned by forest fires and it was this knowledge, mixed with our new reality that brought me in the direction of flora as the foundation for our event brand.

The brand was given life through a vivid colour palette using dark backgrounds and harsh shadows. In my mind, this symbolized what we were trying to do. We knew that many of our attendees were feeling like they were in a dark place with the pandemic and so I wanted to try and brighten that darkness with colour.

Because our event was now taking place in a virtual space, I wanted to be able to fill that space with graphics. On our virtual platform, we gave our attendees access to different sessions before and during the event. Sessions like cooking lessons, meditation sequences, and exercise videos were available. In order to make the space feel as though it was a part of one cohesive event, I created placeholders for each of these sessions using the Support Summit 2020 brand.

With folks watching at home, the screen format of our event became much smaller. No longer were our attendees watching talk content on large screens with a stage as the main focal point, instead content was streamed to them on computer screens. Because of this, slides had to be more interesting and attractive, with pertinent information no longer needing to be written at such a large scale.

The virtual format also allowed for me to develop a new suite of assets that would be used in the main show of our event. Instead of using still imagery as pre-roll and post-roll, I started crafting loops to keep the screen interesting while our attendees waited for our show to begin. This would set a precedent for the virtual events that were to come.

In place of our closing party, we held a virtual concert for our attendees. I wanted to keep this mini event a part of the Support Summit 2020 brand so that it did not feel out of place. The concert itself was given a mini introduction sequence as well as a set of shorter introduction graphics for each of the performing artists.

Since our attendees weren't able to pick up their event swag in person, we shipped it all to them in a customized box. For the swag suite, I had to figure out how to incorporate our event branding into each item as well as work with our logistics team member to use more sustainable materials for our swag.