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DrupalCon Dublin

Overall conference design and branding for the open source conference DrupalCon
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During a few months Drupal Association together with us have worked on creating a logo and website’s elements for DrupalCon Dublin 2016. New host city - new ideas and inspiration!

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That was quite long before we created the final version of a logo. Dublin is a multi-faceted city; it could tell its visitors many different stories. So we needed to choose the main idea to bring to the logo. There are many options to choose from: many famous writers, theatrical performances, dozens of interesting architectural details, and also warm-hearted and friendly citizens.

Initially we started with the concept which was connected with books and famous writers as James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Barclay Beckett on the one hand, and with locals’ passion of telling stories, their sociability and friendliness on another hand. We combined all those things with the Drupal drop (Druplicon) symbol in several different combinations.

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But later the local Irish community refused this idea, so we decided to highlight architectural peculiarities. Dublin has one nice feature - all doors in the city center are painted in different colors. There are a few versions explaining this. Somebody tells that it’s all because of a freedom-loving Irish nature and a protest against monotonous Georgian buildings. Another similar version: after the Queen Victoria’s death, the English government decided to color all doors in Dublin due to the mourning but didn’t specify which color to use exactly. So each local used a paint which they had in a lumber-room and colored a door. And third, the less patriotic version, tells that all doors are differently colored to help drunk locals to find their homes.

So we decided to use a door symbol in the logo and combined it with the Drupal drop, also we added a watercolor texture to emphasize Dublin’s climatic features.

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The Drupal Association and the Irish local community approved this logo and after that, we started to work on the next stage - the website of the conference.

Initially we created the draft with the active usage of watercolor textures but then Association offered to try the completely new way of designing - using Style Tiles. It’s a new approach to beginning design stages. Usually, it’s a single page collection of common elements including color palettes, typography, textures, patterns, and other features. It’s more effective than mood boards for presenting to clients because it provides a more focused vision of the project.

The important thing to remember about Style Tiles is that they are not a final representation of how the website will look like; instead, they help to define the mood, tone, and 'feeling' of a website based on what you've learnt from the client at your initial kickoff meetings.

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You can read more about Style Tiles here and there.

Well, we selected the color palette, fonts, and style of graphical elements. Then we prepared some separated elements of the website: the header, the top illustration, the footer and some icons. Association used them to create a working website.

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We used the style and graphical elements for different related materials: banners, web badges, presentation templates, and other things. Until the end of September we were working on printed materials: signage templates, a conference program guide, and a venue map. And we’ll definitely tell you about all of those things after the Conference. Check the website and see you in Dublin!

P.S. We always can discuss your needs and build an amazing website together - request our free consultation.  

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