EDGE Conference 2019

When collateral design starts to provide a foretaste of things to come.

Educate Plus is a network of advancement professionals working in the education sector within the fields of Admissions, Alumni and Community Relations, Fundraising, as well as Marketing and Communication. It is the only Australasian professional organisation for the education sector, hosting conferences for members via each of its chapters across the country.

The SA/ NT chapter’s conference was scheduled for August 2019, with the theme of E.D.G.E. — an acronym for Explore, Discover, Grow, Engage). The conference format was planned to be on the lines of TEDx Talks where speakers from a range of fields would present thought-provoking perspectives on a range of subjects relevant to Educate Plus members.

The brief to Nicknack was to develop a conference identity that was true to its name — EDGE; something that would be visually inspiring and cutting edge, with the purpose of giving members a flavour for what they could experience by attending the conference.

Using the humble apostrophe as a starting point, being a well-known symbol for communication, a conference identity was evolved that looked like the lowercase letters “e”, “d”, “g” and “e”. These letters then formed the graphic language for the conference.

But that was just the beginning. Each of the themes of Explore, Discover, Grow, Engage were depicted by visual juxtapositions such as a waffle cone coupled with a microphone (to depict the theme of Engage), and a brain combined with a USB stick (to convey the theme of Grow). All these images were developed to reinforce the conference tagline: Challenge Your Mind.

These graphic elements were then applied to a range of conference collateral including brochure, name tags, and social media posts. Nick Price and Peter Rufus of Nicknack were also guest speakers at the conference, along with Justine Firth from Adelaide Airport, for their session on Principles of Strategic Branding using the Adelaide Airport rebrand as a case study.