The Under 30 Summit is less a conference than a four-day takeover: main stage keynotes, a music festival, investor pitching, field trips, a food festival and a day of service, all running at once across a central hub and venues around the city. Attendees needed to know where they were and where they were going at a glance. Sponsors each needed visible, on-brand placement. And the identity had to stay consistent across everything from a 6-foot banner to a mobile schedule.

I built the identity around a color-coding system: each of the 7 zones got its own color, and every track inside a zone shared it. An attendee didn’t need to read a map to know they were in the right place. The color told them.

The system set out:

Zone colors: 7 primaries with tints for the 4 tracks in each zone

Graphic language: a repeating “30” pattern that worked as texture, frame or focal point

Sponsor lockups: fixed rules for co-branding so every sponsor got consistent, fair placement

Templates: for signage, stage backdrops and screens, so production could scale quickly