Each year Coursera puts on a conference for our partners to look ahead to the future of higher education. Being a 100% virtual event in 2021, we were looking for ways to delight our attendees and keep them engaged through hours of conference programing as we were all starting to feel Zoom fatigue.
Position Coursera as a key innovation partner in the global transformation of higher education and lifelong learning.
Showcase the positive impact of the Coursera community.
Myself: Art Direction
Collaborators: Director of Brand, Senior Designer, Events Team, CMO, CEO
Audience: University partners, Industry partners, Enterprise customers
Channels:
Live event
Presentation decks
Email
Website
Social media
I wanted our event to feel dynamic and immersive despite being virtual, so I created visuals using kinetic type, video and animation techniques to bring the conference experience to life and add a sense of physicality to the digital world we were creating.
This event was a fast follow after our rebrand launch, and would be one of the first touchpoints many of our partners would have with our new branding, so I wanted to remain pretty consistent with the rebrand look and feel. I chose our brand font "Source sans pro" in bold to provide a powerful, bold expression to Coursera Conference's tone of voice.
Our new conference logo followed our brand logo architecture with a smaller 'Coursera' and larger secondary brand name to indicate that this event is an offshoot of the main Coursera brand and has its own, separate identity from the platform.
The conference color palette used predominantly cool tones to dial up our Trusted brand value, with some warmer accents to create an Uplifting and Inventive feeling during the experience.
We would tease topics our speakers would be discussing in reels used in targeted social and email communication to our partner community.
Striking video footage would capture attention on social media channels.
Short, type-based animation would be ideal for email where every kb counts.
To enliven the out-of-the-box event page we would use bold imagery and motion graphics as a low-lift way to brand the templatized site.
Though we were apart, we wanted conference to have the same energy as our in-person events. I created reels to be used throughout the conference experience to remind attendees of the bold vision we were working towards together and the learners around the world we were serving.
Between conference sessions we would play interstitial videos that reflected the conference theme and discussion topics.
I used a parallax effect to make still photography of our learners come to life with dynamic movement.
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