I led GitHub's in-house creative team from 18'-19'. We built a 360 campaign leading up to the "Universe" event. We rebranded Universe—w/ a new brand I.D., exhibits, websites, packaging, motion, & guidelines before & after the Microsoft acquisition.
How can we communicate GitHub's brand promise and story in a compelling way that connects with and inspires a community of now 100MM+ developers to continue to make the future of software on GitHub?
Our event branding is grounded in GitHub's existing brand language while future-proofing it as a standalone signature mark. We used two signature GitHub elements every GitHub developer knows to accomplish this. The cube form of GitHub's signature contribution graph squares. And a side silhouette of GitHub's brand mascot, Mona Lisa Octocat. We also needed our color scheme to serve two purposes. Firstly, it needed to be as radiant and diverse as our 100 MM plus developer community. Secondarily, be distinct enough for us to color code all our wayfinding.
There are over 100MM+ developers on GitHub—an opensource community platform where your calling card is your avatar.
To amplify our users, we enabled our community to express their true inner selves through the image of Mona, GitHub's beloved mascot. You can pull from hundreds of different combinations of outfits and accessories through our custom-designed "MyOctocat" exhibit and kiosk at Universe that we designed, illustrated, and developed. There was an outfit fit for the Ruby on Rails to Kubernetes open-source community.
After day one of the Universe, we teased and released the kiosk's website version. In a later iteration released at GitHub's Sattelite event in Berlin, we provided on-demand sticker printing of any octocat generated.
We created and gave a limited amount of Universe attendees a collectible, "Blanktocat." Modeled after GitHub's brand mascot, Mona Lisa Octocat. Each "Blanktocat" could be decorated onsite and taken home to become the perfect adornment for any developer's home office. After the event we sold this collectible on the GitHub shop.
Fans who didn't have a ticket to Universe could get one if they solved a scavenger hunt in the host city of San Francisco.
We designed the Berling Satellite event from floor to ceiling. The arc of our design language is based on the blur of light trails one would see when focusing a camera on the night sky as satellites fly by. We brought this visual language to life for the entire event branding system — from creating badges, motion graphics, custom illustrations, an Octocat Generator 2.0, an updated GitHub shop with new merchandise, including custom-designed skateboards, and much more.
In our inspirational brand anthem video, we celebrate one of the millions of futures being built on GitHub and show what's possible through the power of open thinking, an open internet, and open source on GitHub.
Launched→ the "Building the Future" integrated 360 brand campaign, which generated over 400,000 organic video views and 250,000 website visits in two days.
Shipped→ the GitHub Universe brand event experience and the Octocat Generator product which generated over 400,000 organic page views & 180,000 plus sessions in two days, with 35% of attendees making an Octocat at the onsite exhibit.
Launched→ the GitHub Satellite brand experience events in Tokyo and Berlin.
Won→ a Gold Telly award and a Gold Muse Award for the "Building the Future" brand campaign launch video.
Featured in→ Forbes for the "Building the Future" brand campaign.
Acclaim→ "Brilliant Campaign" Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, for the "Building the Future" brand campaign.
Illustrators→ Tony Jaramillo, João Ribeiro, Cameron Foxly, & Haley Carroll
Designer→ Cecilio Ruiz
Event Production Team→ Agency EA
Production Vendor→ Column Five
Site Developer→ Andrew Ross
Print Vendor→ Imprint Engine
Video Production Vendor→ SlowClap Studios
