Branding
Environmental Graphics

SXSW

Austin’s South By South West (SXSW) conference is home to the world during the month of March for Music, Film, Education, Interactive technologies, and Comedy.  The conference takes over downtown Austin and  Auditorium Shores Park for the outdoor stage free concerts as well as music venues, theaters, and stages for entertainment. The Austin convention center becomes the epicenter for hosting the SXSW Conference.

The Theme for this year's SXSW is inspired by the Italian Renaissance.  The Italian Renaissance came in a post-pandemic society from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century and flourished in creative thinking, art, literature, music, and science after the world had survived the bubonic plague. In contrast to the times, today's century has been battling our modern plague of Covid—19. The last two SXSW conferences were canceled due to the state of the world as it was devastated by the deadly pandemic. The city of Austin has become the avantgarde renaissance as it is growing as one of the fastest cities in the country booming with new ideas and tech. This year's SXSW theme will be a reverence to the predecessors of creative ingenuity and science as a reflection on the state of our current culture in a modern post-pandemic society. 

The theme of the Italian renaissance is incorporated into the redesign of the SXSW conference and visual identity for 2023.  The SXSW logo mark is a combination of several fonts and rendering to create a unique identity.  The colors are reminiscent of pallets from Italian Renaissance paintings.  The X in the south SXSW acronym is emphasized to generate a suite of patterns inspired by Italian Renaissance tapestries, banners, and patterns. The triangle from the negative space of the SXSW logo mark is utilized to enhance patterns and environmental graphics.  Each conference for SXSW has its own pattern suit expressed in different ways identified by colors.  These patterns are incorporated for all aspects of the SXSW conference in branding assets and environmental graphics to wayfinding.      

Environmental Graphics