The Future of Everything Festival in New York, organised by the Wall Street Journal, gathers some of the world’s smartest minds to give attendees an insight into new developments and ideas across a huge range of areas – quite literally, the future of everything. The Festival hadn’t taken place in a central, in-person location since before the pandemic, so for 2022 we were tasked with bringing its brand identity back to life and taking it to the next level to encourage people to return. We developed eight 3D models, from which we created eight animations to excite potential attendees and participants – seven focusing on specific Festival themes and one that brought together all the themes.

The Festival had seven core themes which became the foundation of our animations. However, while ‘health and science’, ‘leisure’, ‘technology’, ‘art and style’, ‘money, ‘power’ and ‘work’ all have huge potential to engage and provoke debate, our challenge was to translate them into animations that could tell their stories. During our collaborative creative conception stage, our task was to distil each of the themes into instantly recognisable elements within a very short timeframe – for both the development and the actual animations themselves. With all-encompassing visuals that aimed to bring the festival experience to life, we targeted our audience at countless touchpoints.

Crafting 3D animations from scratch provides all the possibilities in the world for creative ideation. With the Festival’s ‘F’ monogram as the vessel for presenting our creative ideas, over the course of a series of collaborative workshops and brainstorming sessions, we narrowed down every Festival theme into specific design elements. ‘Health and science’ turned the monogram into a terrarium which is home to a growing tropical plant with its own cloud. ‘Leisure’ sees the monogram as a blender, mixing elements such as dumbbells, footballs and fruit and vegetables (of course) into a vibrant smoothie. ‘Technology’ turns the monogram into a self-contained laser show. ‘Art and style’ shows the monogram as a popcorn maker, popping a serving to the tub at its base (where it forms the ‘E’ element for ‘Everything’). The monogram becomes a safe for ‘money’, opening its door to reveal gold coins and investments. For ‘power’, it’s a unique chessboard, as the pieces jostle for prominence inside. For ‘work’, the monogram is a watercooler, bubbling away while icons from videoconferencing apps float around. Bringing all the elements together as projections on the monogram is the all-encompassing version, visualised as a New York building as people watch the scene from the sidewalk. With each one is the same optimistic jingle, instilling a sense of expectation and hope. Placing all these elements into dynamic, 15-second animations required the precise timing of each design element to produce coherent stories the viewer would understand and appreciate immediately. The strength of each of the animations meant we could also produce visually impressive prints to extend the campaign away from digital screens.

Our 3D animations were used in every single Festival marketing collateral, as well as on site at the Festival itself. The result was a sold-out crowd who were ready and eager to shape our futures. Our work reached hundreds of thousands of people across New York – online, on the subway, on the streets and at the Festival. The results were so strong that our work has become a key fixture of the Festival’s identity – we are creating brand-new work for the upcoming 2023 event.