- Role: Design lead
- Skills: Ideation, Branding, Graphic design, Swag design
- Tools: Creative Suite, WordPress
- Duration: Six months (part time)
- Iterations: Five
WordCamps are conferences dedicated to everything WordPress. WordCamp London 2015 was a 3 day conference held at London Metropolitan University from 20th – 22nd March. As with all WordCamps, it was organised by volunteers who are passionate about WordPress and the WordPress community.
Whilst I have designed for and volunteered at a number of WordCamps, this stands out as my all time favourite.
Punk rocks
For WordCamp London the organising team were keen to find a theme for overall conference design. I created a number of mood boards that covered things we considered to be typically “London” and developed ideas from that.
There was one idea that stood out and having grown up on a diet of punk rock, it felt like a natural fit. WordCamp London 2015 would be based on the punk rock subculture of the 70's. It would give us a conference that is fun, bright and distinct.
Adopting Wapuu
The WordPress mascot Wapuu was born out of the Japanese WordPress community. Whilst the mascot had been used in Japan since 2011, very few WordCamps outside of Japan were adopting the mascot. For WordCamp London we wanted to change that.
Meet Wapuunk! The only Wapuu with DM boots, a mowhawk and safety pin piecing. The little mascot I designed became the star of the show and was made available to purchase via the WordPress swag store shortly after the event. The money raised from the sales has been used to support the WordPress foundation.
Wapuu is completely open source, the source code can be found on GitHub along with the original Wapuu gallery.
Swag
All good WordCamps provide a unique piece of swag to remember the event, normally in the form of a t-shirt. We had some t-shirts made, but given the event was taking place on the tail end of a British winter, we decided we needed a little something extra. The result was a scarf, featuring Wapuunk of course.
Huge props to @scottsweb for the best WordCamp branding & swag I've seen to date. Amazing work, Scott <3 #wcldn
— Petya Raykovsk, @petyeah
We also made digital swag for those that couldn't attend the event in person. You can download posters and wallpapers from the event website, all under a creative commons licence.