Uncharted: TEDxToronto 2020 Branding

Uncharted website landing page previews in desktop and mobile view

TEDxToronto

Toronto, ON

TEDxToronto chose the theme, “Uncharted,” for their annual conference in 2020. The creative brief for its visual identity was conceptual and open-ended, and left a lot up to the imagination as to how it could be visually expressed. There was also a pitfall of expressing “charted-ness,” as opposed to “uncharted-ness”—as in, avoiding overt visuals of maps or charts. The biggest challenge was to come up with something that effectively communicated the theme, but would not be too prescriptive in approach. Motion was the key to expressing the new theme. Working in Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects gave several visual cues, particularly how the software uses four-quadrant grids to show different angels and perspectives of a given object. The team came up with a modular system comprising four Scenes (grids) and four Objects (3D items) that grow incrementally in complexity, as well as a set of loose rules on how to combine each of the elements in a way that is easily digestible to the viewer. The result is a unique and dynamic series of visuals that create an interesting tension between 2D and 3D, and represents new ideas merging out of uncharted territories.