Open Your Perspective
Red Hat Summit 2021 | Global
Art directing, concepting, and implementation for Red Hat Summit 2021 included print, social, swag, digital platform, animation, video and much, much more for the largest Red Hat event to date - 34,000 registrations worldwide!
Leading a team of 10+ people from multiple disciplines in a virtual world was a brand new challenge. The goal of this year's theme development process was to emphasize the value of uplifting the perspectives of attendees by positioning Red Hat Summit as the place where they’re heard. After rounds of stakeholder feedback, deep dives, and 3 solid directions to chose from, we landed on deconstructed letters and shapes to represent the magic of coming together to create something larger than the individual. Guidelines and a kit of parts were then created by collaborating with the lead animator to serve as a comprehensive tool for our agencies, freelancers, and internal creatives to take and create from.
The work didn't stop there – I worked with my copywriter counterpart to create the first ever promotional campaign to focus on milestones and plan strategic and creative social media efforts. Focus then switched onto partnering with our virtual platform RainFocus to create inviting and easy to use experiences for our attendees for 2 parts of the Summit experience.
Taking the theme elements from 2D to 3D was an important request from our stakeholders. I worked with our internal animator to provide direction on how to accomplish this and have it transform seamlessly back and forth between the two styles.
Keeping the virtual environment as clean and straightforward as possible was a goal in order to keep the attendee engaged on the content being delivered.
The keynote teams took the theme elements and translated them into elements for high level, technical graphics to enhance our executives thoughts and ideas.
One of the best spin off projects from Summit was the need for custom "stock" photography. I collaborated with various team leads and a photographer to ensure diverse, compelling, and relatable photos of attendees. After lots of input and specifics, the result was a full library of images to use for promotion, digital, and virtual platform use.
Creating full visual and messaging guidelines was important in order to help extended team members as well as external agencies and freelancers work with the theme. Trainings were also provided to help answer any questions.
Sessions included:
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50+ sessions
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10 keynotes
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6 customer spotlights
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3 tech demos
Art directing the promotional video was so much fun! Using the theme shapes as frames for video, photos, and other content that gave a brief deep dive into what Summit offers.
Creative credits/contributors:
Associate Creative Director: Joseph Schlosser, Art Director: Stephanie Whedbee, Copywriter: Jen Hasty, Designers: Jess Law, Ruben Moreno, Clara May, Boo Boo Howse, Sr. UX Designer: Adam Thornburg,, Project Management: Ashley Lowe, Amarachi Anakaraonye, Animation: Jingky Gilbert, Photography: Jason Arthurs, Platform Agency: Rain Focus