Infinity Festival
Infinity Festival is an annual event that celebrates the intersection of technology and storytelling. It brings together creators, innovators, and industry leaders to explore the future of entertainment through advancements like AI, virtual reality, gaming, blockchain, and immersive experiences. Hosted in Los Angeles, the festival features keynotes, panels, screenings, exhibitions, and networking opportunities, showcasing cutting-edge developments shaping the next generation of creative industries.
Goals
As a part of the festival's first and second year, the team behind Zero Folks oversaw a wide-ranging series of tasks:
- Build a striking visual identity that pays homage to the history of Los Angeles and the future of innovation in storytelling
- Produce and manage advertising campaigns, both digital and in print
- Create any and all visual assets required for the success of the event
Considerations
Creating a lasting brand is a challenge on its own, and doing it within the creative sector adds further complexity. The creative professionals of Los Angeles understandably expects premium events to feature a high level of polish, which oftentimes is not synergistic with the startup mentality. For Zero Folks, this meant composing a strategy that ensures high-quality deliverables while also being able to pivot as new information present itself.
Industry conferences also require thoughtful planning for how you showcase your key stakeholders: the sponsors. Each sponsor comes with their own branding guidelines and technical specifications, making them a client by proxy. Dissatisfied sponsors can have cascading effects on the event at large and subsequently our engagement with the conference.
Strategy
Given the scope and circumstances of this project, we knew we had to plan our methodology carefully.
- Communicate and align the holistic vision with founders to shape expectations on day 1
- Work closely with event producers and technical directors to assess conference scope and logistics
- Draft a comprehensive list of every possible asset that needs to be delivered, including its deadline, technical specifications and file format
- Implement the quick and iterative productized approach to generating assets. In other words, draft creative at light speed and get client feedback immediately. Repeat this process until final export.
Thanks to the incredible logo work of Jennifer Pearl from Team Computer, we already knew what appealed to the client walking in. The logo featured an astronaut walking through an open-space movie theatre overlooking a triad of intersecting nebulas. This was an excellent blend of retro-futurism and Los Angeles Gen-Z core, which is just what this festival needed. With this as the backdrop, we got to work on extrapolating a brand identity.
Since the logo already incorporated an eclectic mix of graphics, we felt it was essential to emulate those designs and build our concept around that. For year 1 of Infinity Festival, we leaned into this idea of "nebulas," where each nebula represent its own dimension of storytelling format (theatrical, augmented reality, books etc.).
Based on data insights from year 1, we selected for a cleaner look in year 2. Even though we elected for a iterative approach, new design elements such as big swirly shapes and a tightened wordmark became central for the marketing campaigns.
Delivery
Throughout the 2-year engagement with Infinity Festival, Zero Folks produced 6000+ assets, including:
- Print: Billboards, posters, attendee badges, merchandise, step-and-repeats
- Social media: Publishing calendar, posts and graphics
- Videos: Teaser trailer, recap, looping animations
- Digital ads: Display ads, banners and thumbnails
- Logistics: Content delivery network, speaker intake form
- Production: Photography & video capture
- Branding: Style guides, press kit, pitch decks, trophy design, icon libraries
