Branding
For client
IonOptix
My Role
Completed
The Story
Company's context
As a company of scientists, IonOptix is committed to supporting preclinical researchers around the world on their quest to better understand cellular and tissue mechanics, cardiovascular function and related disease. The company's products include high-speed imaging systems, fluorescence-based calcium imaging systems, and software for data acquisition and analysis. IonOptix's equipment is used in a wide range of applications, including basic research, drug discovery, and clinical diagnostics.
The designed products are presented at conferences and events where a stand is available for showing the latest advancements in muscle research equipment. Recently, we collaborated with a leading equipment developer and manufacturer for muscle research, showcasing our newest backdrop design at their booth. Our backdrop seamlessly integrates with their cutting-edge equipment, providing an eye-catching and informative display that draws in attendees and promotes their brand."
Requirements
The initial requirements were a bit mixed, as many people wanted many things. Overall, they converged in most of the basic features, but differed in the amount of content as some wanted more details about the company to be displayed, while others wanted to keep it purely decorative. Despite that, these where the requirements:
- As the backdrop will be used for multiple conferences, it's crucial to create a versatile design that can be easily adapted and reused.
- Needs to show the main IonOptix Logo
- The title needs to include "Cardiovascular research instrument", as that's the main service they provide.
- All the "visible" items need to be at least 80 cm far from the bottom of the canvas, as there'll be a table right in front of the banner.
- The texts and the logo need to be big enough to be visible across the room (from ~10m), especially the logo.
- Needs to be 3x3 meters.
Starting point
The rest of the information that needed to be added was variable, and could be picked from the current version at that time (referred to as "start point").
My role in the project
Designing a backdrop for a conference requires careful planning and attention to detail.
Here are some of the key responsibilities I undertook when designing the conference's backdrop:
- Collaborating with event presenters to determine the theme, style, and overall aesthetic for the conference backdrop.
- Conducting research on the conference's topic, industry, and target audience to inform design decisions and ensure relevance.
- Creating a visually appealing and cohesive design that captures the essence of the presented goods.
- Selecting appropriate typography, color schemes, and imagery that effectively convey the message and tone of the conference.
- Designing the backdrop in the appropriate size and format, and ensuring it is legible and visible from different angles and distances.
Design rationale
The stroke figure you see as a main element in the screens is a myocardiocyte, or a heart cell. The original image has been converted to a vector and applied a stroke-only conversion, resulting in the interesting representation we see below.
The color palette of the company is quite concise. Includes black, white and bright blue. The hues used for the heart cells though come from the research carried out by the company. One of the techniques used for actually seeing the cells uses fluorescent features, which is commonly associated to green. The original image contains this green and, when taking its complementary color, it results in pink and purple hues.
Versions
Simple white
Following the requirements, the first item to be placed was the company's logo (requirement #1), high on top and big enough to be seen from the distance (#4).
The main text (#2) followed naturally right under the logo, and same did the extra information picked from the original start point and set as a subtitle.
Next, the pills underneath the text have a double mission: First, they need to grab the reader's attention by visually standing out from the rest of the elements. Second, they need to contain short and specific data as, in this case, "Data acquisition" and "Data analysis", which are the company's main services.
Last, and in order to avoid too much white space, I included the blue diamond on the right side to fill the space.
Detailed
Remember I said some people preferred having more content? This was the version that pleased them.
Text strictly extracted from the start point has been placed on the right, filling the space once occupied by the blue diamond. Because I didn't want it to resemble the kind of slides that only contain text (and are mostly skipped by readers due to their dull looks), some icons have been added, trying to represent the title they decorate.
Excitation and contraction are terms related to heart cells (as they are muscles), and an icon that displays strips that shorten and lengthen perfectly mimmic their movement. When we go one level deeper into that menu, we see data acquisition and data analysis. The company actually uses microscopes to collect data, which is why the acquisition part made so much sense to be depicted as one. Then, the data analysis could use a well-known magnifying glass to give the sense of "looking into the data"
On the other hand, electric and, mechanical and tools are represented by a bolt and a cog (in the background), respectively.
And one more detail before we continue! Noticed the main images changed positions? In order to not mess up the text detail area, they needed to be repositioned. However, their size could not decrease too much, as I wanted to keep some color on the display, therefore they've been rotated to a more vertical position, playing with the distance between the subtitle and the text detail on the right. Due to the tight space, the icons from the text detail needed to make use of a white background, which has been displayed as "floating" over the images to give a depth feeling.
Focus
Most of the decisions have already been explained in previous versions, but there's one extra tiny detail to explain in this version.
Please notice there are triangles protruding from the edges of the canvas. Despite the 007 theme look, the intention was different here. Data acquisition is a main service of the company, and they do it by mainly using microscopes or other types of cameras. What most of them have in common is they have an aperture that controls the amount of light that enters the camera. These triangular shapes try to represent that aperture element, as it's core to the business.
The "Optix" word in the name is not there my mistake after all.
Dual color
Yet again, the basic elements of the design have been explained. Lets go for the extras:
We see the a great deal of the canvas has now turned dark, while keeping the white theme still on the right side. This idea started from the logo itself, as it features these two colors. I thought it would be nice to melt together the logo and the background, and this turned out to be more powerful than I though.
If you focus on the "Optix" word of the logo, seems like it's been highlighted by a black background. Now, if you focus on the pink-purple heart cell, it also seems to be highlighted by the dark side of the canvas, as its color becomes a more vivid green, which aligns with the same principle as the logo.
Therefore, the black background highlighter seems to be discovering something by allowing us to see what the white light did not allow us to see. Funny enough, most of the observation tools need to reduce the interference of external light in order to reduce noise and deliver quality data.
With this, the merging of logo and background has been completed.
