TAM! The Amazing Meeting
Event Branding
Science Meets Art
The Amaz!ng Meeting, sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation, is an annual conference for critical thinkers and professional skeptics. 2015’s theme was A Celebration of a Reasoned Life in honor of “The Amazing” Randi’s retirement.
Concept
Marrying art and design with logic and reason to appeal to our science-minded audience, we presented two distinctive design directions. One, industrial and steampunk-inspired, and the other—the direction chosen by the clent—inspired by natural patterns and fractals.
Concept A
Steampunk Inspired. Retro-futuristic – it's Victorian – it's the Wild West...and it could be "AMAZING". With fun color & texture, smart, irreverant, playful use of typography, imagery and experimental treatment of photography (black & white, grainy, sepia tone.)
Concept B
Fibonacci Meets Mathematics Meets Science Meets Art. Whether it's the theory of relativity or the golden ratio, mathematical equations gives us an absolute and they can also be translated into mesmerizing works of art. In terms of color and shapes, our options were limitless with this concept. The number 13 is part of the Fibonacci sequence which can be found in so much of nature, most notably, the nautilus shell.
Method to the Madness
Given the superstition and mysticism surrounding the number 13, it seemed only natural to highlight that this was the 13th year of the conference. To honor, James Randi, the founder of the event, many pieces prominently featured various renderings of his likeness. The Phi Mask uses the Golden Ratio to map out the relative proportions of the human face. Extending the rays past the vertices of the Golden Decagon surrounding the mask created webs that are used in the background of many of the elements.
Seeing in 3-D
We learned a new trick on this one: ChromoDepth 3-D. According to the wealth of knowledge that is Wikipedia, Chromadepth is a system that produces a stereoscopic effect based upon differences in the diffraction of color through special glasses which gives the illusion of colors taking up different positions in space, with red being in front, and blue being in back. Braving the funny looks from passers-by, we donned those crazy looking glasses and ended up creating what we thought were some pretty cool piece.
Deliverables
From a program guide filled with brainteasers to wearable art, TAM! 13 was branded from web to toe!
