ted conferences: ted fellows book
TRANSCRIPT
TED Conferences:TED Fellows Book
TED Conferences:TED Fellows Book
Background Info:The TED Fellows program gathers
a global network of over 250 innovators from a wide range of
disciplines. Founded in 2009, the program “brings together young world-changers and trailblazers
who have shown unusual accomplishment and courage”.
In 2013, TED Conferences hired In-House, the design studio I
co-founded to develop and design a book about the first five years of the
TED Fellows Program to distribute in the very first TED Fellows Retreat
in Whistler, Canada.
Goals:1) The book had to be the definitive
document on the history of the first years of the TED Fellows program. Rather than a collection of articles previously published in media, the
book had to provide a tridimensional view of the challenges, successes,
failures, human stories and unexpected results of the program’s
first half-decade. We were tasked with the full editorial development of the book, including its concept,
content, and design.
2) The book also had to serve as a marketing tool, creating awareness
about the program's impact to show to partners and sponsors.
Infographics, timelines, and statistics could be included, but they could not break the editorial pace of
the book. We were tasked to make an engaging product about human
stories – not an annual report.
Challenge:How might we tell the stories of
over 200 very different people and their heterogeneous visual work,
while keeping a cohesive and engaging overall narrative?
NETWORKS
PROJECTS
COLLABORATIONS
* detail of process / concept boards, as presented to client.
Process:To create a compelling editorial experience I researched, tested, and developed solutions for the
following three areas:
1) Content: after a series of initial meetings with the client and
stakeholders I created a matrix that plotted stories, subjects and
topics – along with a compendium of narrative devices: articles,
interviews, conversations, pictorials, infographics, etc. Once
the best pairings of content and method were identified, we began
to build a seamless narrative,
alternating long and short form, graphics and text. The 84-page
book was designed to be substan-tial for the 3.5 hour average flight
of TED Conference attendees.
2) Identity: as a human-centered project about the strength of
networks, it’s only appropriate that the visual language of the book was
built in collaboration with other TED Fellows. I tested various
content configurations. From those insightsI created a system to
manage over twenty collaborations worldwide to showcase the diversity
of the Fellows' visual work.
Process (continued):We partnered with MIT graphic
designer and TED Fellow E. Roon Kang to create the visual brand.
Chapter covers featured collaborations with designers,
artists and photographers; infographics were built with the help of data scientists from the
TED Fellows community.
Lastly, I built a system designed to create a seamless visual narrative based on two rules: a limited color
palette, and a rigid grid. This proved flexible enough to support diverse
graphic styles while still providing a uniform product experience.
3) Production: we took advantage of digital printing technology by
printing a book that featured 170 different covers for the book, each
featuring a different Fellow.
This was unprecedented for a book a print run numbering in the
thousands. This meant employing a combination of printing techniques:
offset for the pages of the book, and digital for the cover and back
cover – which in turn required working closely with printers in
Canada to fine-tune color management between two different
printing methods and machinery.
Results:Eventually I discovered a latent
need in our users, the TED Fellows: after interviewing about a dozen of
them I discovered that most had only meet about 20 other Fellows –
the ones that were part of their class. All of them said that they
wished there were a social / community experience that helped
them meet other Fellows quickly.
This finding differed from our original goal, but was important
enough to propel us to address this need with out design work.
In 2013, several thousand copies of the book were printed, with
hundreds distributed during the TED Fellows Retreat and quickly becoming a much-talked-about
event highlight.
TED Fellows were encouraged to swap their copies of the book and
to find a copy that featured their own face on the cover, which in turn created a unique social experience: each copy of the book passed many
sets of hands, becoming a social device for swapping stories and
meeting new people.
An unintended effect of the success of this social experience was that
attendees carried their books everywhere, displaying them in
hopes of eventually finding a copy with their own face on the cover!
The book success prompted a continuing collaboration with the TED Conference and TED Fellows team which includes projects in a
variety of media – some of it featured in this page. Clockwise
from top left: data presentations for the TED Conference, stage keynotes
for flagship TED Youth conference, motion graphics for "Looking Out"
for the TEDxSMU, interactive graphics for TED.com blog. More
recently, we developed a new editorial product for TED Fellows:
“Swimming Against the Tide”, a 300-page, full color hard cover coffee table book featuring the
visual work of the TED Fellows, on the occasion of the second TED
Fellows Retreat in 2015.
Role(s):Creative Direction, Art Direction,
User Research, Project Management.
HOW MUCHDOES YOUR WORKSUPPORT YOUFINANCIALLY?
I’M COMFORTABLE
I’M ABLE TO PROVIDEFOR MYSELF
& MY FAMILY
I COULD BEMORE SECURE
I’M JUSTSCRAPING BY
I’M ALWAYSOUT OF MONEY
19%19% 19%
37%
6%
November 15, 2014Brooklyn Museum