Prepare yourselves, Ignition Community Conference (ICC) fans, for a glimpse into some of the unique aspects that set this automation event apart. Explore the creative journey that leads to ICC through this mini-blog series, offering rare insights into what it takes to make the memorable moments that you see onsite at the conference.
Think of a memorable industry event that you’ve attended. Chances are, there was a carefully crafted set of images and words that raised your interest in attending and then shaped your experience while there. You may be surprised to learn how much time and effort can go into branding a large event. In this blog post, we’ll give you a glimpse into the work of creating memorable branding for ICC, year in and year out.
A New Theme Every Year
The first ICC was held in 2013 (the theme was “Powerful Connections”) and Inductive Automation has adopted a new theme for the conference every year since then. Whether it was “Discover” in 2014, “Accelerate” in 2016, or “Elevate” in 2023, the ICC theme has often been used not just as a way to promote the event but as a motivational motto for the company internally and the Ignition community.
That’s not by accident: ICC themes are chosen to reflect the company's current status, future aspirations, and community experiences. This year’s theme, “Level Up,” was no exception. Andrew Hayes, who is IA’s Branding Department Manager, says, “We actually thought of ‘Level Up’ last year and we held on to it for this year because we knew we were going to be in a new venue and releasing Ignition 8.3, so we were going to be literally leveling up.”
However, we don’t only write a different theme (or what you might call a slogan) — we also change the entire visual look and feel of ICC every year. Developing a whole new brand every year is unusual for a conference (the more common practice is to repeat or subtly update the branding) but it feels right for a company that makes a highly versatile, design-oriented software platform and has a community that’s growing rapidly across so many industries. For the Branding Department (which is a team within the Marketing Division that focuses on graphic design and copywriting), this presents exciting opportunities for variety and creative freedom as well as the challenges of generating fresh ideas and new deliverables each year.
Choosing The Theme
There’s a general process to how the theme is developed and selected. Themes often start as a single verb or a short phrase, like “Build” in 2015, “Lead The Way” in 2018, or “Envision” in 2020. The marketing team considers many of these proposed themes (in fact, they often begin brainstorming the next year’s ICC theme right after that year’s ICC is over), and narrows them down to three or four favorite options. Then the branding team develops descriptive paragraphs and mood boards to flesh out those three or four themes.
The theme descriptions and mood boards are then presented to a committee made up of IA executives and other leaders, who provide input based on what they want to convey about the company and what they believe will resonate with the community. Once the committee has selected the final ICC theme, the Branding Department develops the official logo and visual identity.
More Than A Logo
The finished ICC logo informs the overall visual identity, including a color palette, illustrations, icons, and imagery that create a sense of cohesion across the entire ICC experience. The logo and visual identity are used across various physical and digital deliverables, including signage, registration booths, ads, email signatures, content templates, virtual-meeting backgrounds, and even socks and shirts.
This provides a consistent experience for the ICC attendee, whether you’re looking at a wayfinding sign to see where the next session is located, checking the schedule in the ICC app on your phone, or watching the conference virtually with a Livestream Pass. Because we’re holding ICC in a larger venue this year, there is more physical space to cover, and the number of marketing deliverables required is greater than ever.
To brand ICC effectively, the branding team must come up with adaptable designs that can be easily recognized in many different contexts. “Now when our team is thinking about the branding, we always ask, ‘Does it shirt, so to speak? Does it have a simple, recognizable mark that connects to the theme?’” Andrew says. According to Andrew, this is why you see a lightning bolt in the ICC 2024 “Breakthrough” branding and the three chart-like bars in this year’s “Level Up” branding.
Awards: A Brand Within A Brand
The Ignition Firebrand and Discover Gallery Awards are also redesigned every year and have their own distinctive look, feel, and process, making them an ICC brand within a brand.
The award-design process is spearheaded by IA Lead Designer Chris Lastufka, and it basically begins after the final ICC theme mood board is selected, usually around January. Chris sketches ideas, refines them in Adobe Illustrator, imports the specifications into Fusion360, a CAD software for 3D modeling, and then he uses the CAD render to create prototypes, first at 50% scale and then at 100% scale for final evaluation. “Being able to hold it in your hands really helps you to understand how the winner of the Firebrand Award is going to interact with it when they get it,” Chris says.
Once the prototype is approved internally, it’s sent to Watson Design, a Canada-based boutique award design studio that manufactures the awards. Chris mentions that the Watson Design team, which produces thousands of awards per year, appreciates receiving his designs to work from rather than having to design the awards from scratch.
The whole process from ideation to finished awards usually takes six to seven months. This may seem like a lot of time and effort for making trophies, but we want to honor our community members’ best work and recognize the role they play in Ignition’s evolution. We think the awards we give them should reflect the hard work, creativity, and passion that they put into their Ignition projects.
Working on the awards is certainly a passion project for Chris, who says that his personal favorites are the 2022 “X” award (which included a 3D-printed faceted triangle and a synthetic countertop material that approximated marble), and the 2023 "Elevate" award (which was our first award to incorporate painted wood and to utilize Watson Design's CNC machine).
Where ‘Level Up’ Comes To Life
Who will take home those exquisitely designed awards? How will attending ICC help you level up your Ignition skills and professional network? What will the new field guides and attendee badges look like? What exciting updates will our company leaders share about the future of IA? There’s only one way to find out, which is by joining over a thousand of your peers at ICC 2025 in Sacramento, California, and there’s not much time left to register. Get your ticket today and level up with us at ICC!
