Building world-class conference for students in Central Europe

Client Nexteria Time span 3 years and counting Service Branding; Website; Marketing; UI&UX Design

Our longlasting realationship started back in 2015, where I was invited to just help maintain current design materials for next conference. After few weeks of work we concluded that Night of Chances should had better identity.

NOC (short for Night of Chances, which also means Night in slovak language) is conference for students and young professionals who seek to get more knowledge while they attend University or just finished one. Students can visit workshops lead by professionals from top-tier companies in Central Europe, listen to CEO's / CTO's / ... on panel discussion, speed date with interesting person's from their field of study or interest and much more.

Companies like adidas, ESET, Swiss-Re or Amazon are invited to attend the conference. Students can ask them hard questions on panel discussions or directly at networking area. Students who attend workshops can solve real use-cases with their potentional boss. Everything revolves around the most hot topics of today – blockchain, big-data or flying cars.

We started working with NOC when there were only one conference at semester – currently there are usually three. The conference focuses on different topics – Business, Technology, Engineering and sometimes mix of those three. Apart from that NOC was in Bratislava and Košice in Slovakia, Prague and Brno in Czech Republic and one was in London.

With those informations – format, place and topics, we needed to design a system that is both universal and easy to undestand. At the start of 2017 we build first logo sets. It contained the name of the conference and main topic. Apart from that every topic had different distinguishable color. The main color used across all topics was dark black, beacuse we wanted to accent the unique format of the conference – that it was mainly in the night. At this point the brand was a bit known in few universities but the project was just at the beggining. Our intention was to be very clear in what NOC is and what people can experience.

With completed logos with continued to develop the website and marketing materials. That was process of it's own. Conference of this scale needs to cover everything students can experience in dozens of formats and all that needed to be multiplied by three.

Based on the data we've got from the old website, there was mainly traffic from mobile devices, so we started with designing that. The website was mainly dark to underline the main indetity of Night of Chances. We condensed every important information straight in user's viewport – what, where, for who, how and most important when. Next are basic introductions about the format, word from students about previous events, gallery and partners.

Workshops are limited so to attend one (or three), students needs to join them and send their CV. Based on the information provided the company can pick students who are most interested in the topic. Both companies and students can focus on topics they're intersted and it creates special bond between them.

When we started to work together we also helped to build the team. Whole team more than doubled in time and we're happy to have such good relationship with our client.

The main focus of campaign are social media where students are introduced to main topics, workshops, interesting people who attend the conference and their story. The time and energy spend to bring students interesting materials is level above other conferences for students.

Every experience – workshop, panel discussion, professional lecture, video interview.. have specific format to distinguish them from each other. We took special care to introduce all the content in individual way.

We also connected pleasent with useful and came with small kiosk where students can stop by, have a coffee and if they're intersted they can talk with people from NOC about the conference while they make them coffee. In 2017 we also came with idea for a special Night of Chances brew obtained at the conference.

Every year we've made some minor changes to the identity, because we felt more confident with how the brand was accepted. The Night of Chances is cornerstone for students who want to know more, make the next step before they graduate. With every event we make the brand more simple with simple yet strong message.

With the success of every event we look forward to help the team of Night of Chances to spread to more countries and more students who seek knowledge.