The secret life of creatives at the intersection of human rights and technology
Behind the scenes of the 2020 IFF creative direction process
Every year the personality and visual identity of the Internet Freedom Festival changes to capture the dynamic spirit of human rights defenders around the world. Just as eclectic as our community, our image has mutated from Memphis Group style squiggly lines and unicorns, to geeky tropical vibes, to activist spirit animals. The 2020 IFF will bring some of the biggest changes to the festival so far, including how we approach the creation of our visual identity.
In this post series I’ll be taking you behind the scenes of the 2020 IFF creative direction process. Creative direction is more than just design; it sets the tone, the mood, the atmosphere. It identifies opportunities that drive the creation of new activities and programs. Most importantly, it creates the narrative and personality required for the outside world to engage with your organization.
By exposing this otherwise unnoticed process, I’d like to celebrate the role of creatives working in digital rights and, hopefully, inspire more of them to join the space.
Right now there is a great opportunity for creatives to work at the intersection of human rights and technology, by helping organizations better respond to challenges through radical new approaches, breaking free of the lethargic cycle of traditional requests for proposals.
Part 1: The Concept
In creative direction, the only thing more important than the what is the why. The concept is the compass that guides you when you get lost exploring the Realm of Inspiration and its multiple crossroads and alternate paths.
With the 2020 IFF, the organization is entering a new stage. As our team grows and new programs are launched, the communities we serve are evolving too. Many new groups have appeared over the past five years (shout out to our friends at Digital Society of Zimbabwe, an organization that was born at the first IFF). Because the IFF was conceived as a community tool, not as a conference, we are committed to adapting to the needs of the digital rights space.
Next year’s IFF will revolve around the importance of transformation, and how we can collectively achieve the change we want.
This underlying theme serves as the foundation for the creative concept. The challenge is to create a concept that attracts and engages our community to participate in this collective transformation.
Selecting the concept is like setting the laws of nature in a new universe. These laws should allow for life to easily thrive and develop with as much diversity as is possible.
It’s important to test the potential of a concept early on. For instance, one of the first concepts I explored for next year revolved around transformation as movement and exploration. I thought about creating a map of the Land of Digital Rights, making each region a digital rights issue that we would like to explore. We could make mail stamps for each region. IFF participants could collect these stamps by attending sessions on different topics, and then stick them to their IFF Exploration Journal. During the opening ceremony we could use paper planes to send messages of encouragement to other participants. We could make Postcards from the Internet, and send them en masse to denounce organizations with bad policies, or to give love and support to those defending an open and accessible internet for all. For the closing ceremony, we could have a collective exercise to include “uncharted areas” in the Land of Digital Rights map, which could serve as a roadmap for future issues and challenges we should be working on over the next year.
However, in any creative endeavor, quality requires quantity. And so, many concepts later, I had a realization:
The concept shouldn’t focus on transformation as a topic, it should focus on transformation as a process.
From alchemy to Internet Alchemy
Some time before our current era lived a man who produced cryptic works about natural philosophy, such as the relationship between the macro and the micro (“as above, so below”), how all things exist in duality and polarity, and how every cause has an effect. His writings (or hers, or theirs) fascinated many for centuries to come, including Isaac Newton himself, who translated The Emerald Tablet to English. This man was Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Greatest), and he’s often referred to as one of the firsts alchemists.
In essence, alchemy is about achieving a transformation. It was the following excerpt from The Seven Great Hermetic Principles that helped me leap to the next level.
Reading:
“Matter is just densified spirit.”
I thought:
“A festival is just densified internet.”
The concept of Internet Alchemy was born using the world of alchemy as the source of inspiration and infusing it with the digital rights agenda.
Why do people come together at festivals?
To create change.
That creation is oftentimes chaotic, unpredictable.
We call Internet Alchemy the process of mixing the unexpected to collectively create the change we want.
Internet Alchemy is the catalyst for community transformation.
In Internet Alchemy terms, transformation is an ongoing cycle, not a goal. Digital rights groups are both products and makers of the internet; descendants and progenitors; cause and effect.
The building blocks of the concept were established by breaking down the key elements of alchemy and coming up with their Internet Alchemy equivalents:
Beyond the visuals
The creative concept needs to transcend the graphics and permeate throughout the entire project. The stronger the concept, the greater the source of inspiration for new ideas. The following are some early ideas that were explored to bring the Internet Alchemy concept to life at the 2020 IFF:
- Session format: Transmutation, new format where speakers are matched with others from different backgrounds to co-lead a session that may produce unexpected outcomes and new approaches.
- Opening ceremony: participants are encouraged to take a moment to reflect about what they came here to transform, both at a personal level (micro), and as part of their community (macro).
- Social activity: displaying messages of support for digital rights and freedom of expression can be dangerous in some regions. Throughout the week, IFF attendees can participate in workshops to “code” the identity of their community, designing their own alchemical symbols only recognizable by other initiates.
Continue reading part two of this series:
