Once upon a time we got invited to participate in a tender as an event organizers. This was the big IT company developing different types of software, with offices all around the world and thousands employees — LUXOFT. Way too big corporation for the wild small us, but we were tempted to try (and we have a thing for geeks). We came with 3 different ideas; all of them impressed the committee and none of them was it. Since we didn’t expect we would succeed, we just put all the maneuvers aside and said, ‘We have one more idea that isn’t in the presentation, since we don’t think it would fit. Here it is: as you know, we are fest-makers, so let us make a festival? A real corporate festival brand to communicate and practice the company’s core values, to be developed in future and implemented in different cities. 4000 people is the amount of audience many festivals would envy.’ And they responded, ‘Wow, we love the idea, let’s do it!’ We went away puzzled, with all stereotypes broken. The fun had begun.
The first ever tech-geek music festival was named BYTE & BEAT — because of the similar mysterious nature of these two phenomenons — music and data, shaken but not stirred in one concept.
For the brand ID we used the obvious symmetry of the B&B abbreviation, and the name translated to the binary code for the background pattern. We used neon green as the main color, and yellow, violet and pink as supportive ones.
Posters of different colors for 3 cities
Artistic posters
Stickers
T-shirts
A few words on the star we had accidentally discovered. Meet Geeks On Gig’s, the new rap gang consisting of 6 Lufoxt’s bravest top managers, including The CEO of Luxoft Ukraine. They teamed up for the sake of the festival — what would a festival without a secret gig? — to set up the standard of high tech rocking&rolling and to communicate the brand’s core values.
We produced for them the debut hit, the backstage video and also staged their first live show. Must say, this was something! They truly rocked – even twice during the event. Here is the rap song, produced in collaboration with our long time friends and amazing sound producers The Cruising, explaining the idea behind the festival’s naming quite well.
– Yo, bros! I mean colleagues.
Hope everybody rolled closer to the stage?
’cause we’re here about to break clichés. I would even say, blow up and rock,
and this is kinda of program speech. Or i would even say, a programmer’s rap.
In short, at the beginning of two thousand nineteenth
the state of affairs and the new world order
is that everything’s made of code, the world is literally woven from code,
and if anyone truly rules the world not attracting attention of orderlies –
then it’s a coder. Giving commands right from a room, quite ordinary.
He is a citizen of the digital world, he speaks ten languages, that’s at minimum:
English, Ruby, Objective C, Python, PHP, Sequel, C ++, surely, Java and Java Script,
and, of course, he can easily tell house from minimal.
Because, while he seemingly quietly sits fixing screens of code like music scores,
his fingers are dancing upon keyboard, beat is bursting into his earphones.
He’s a developer, he moves the world forward – methodically, neatly, by sprints in Slack,
he codes like god and debugs like a dog, refining the code, he is ambitious, yet humble,
he is not into the cheap glory like some attention-hungry blogger.
He just keeps doing his thing, thing that gives him a thrill –
writes software sending mankind into the space. He’s intelligent, focused, tranquil;
his brain is a powerful accelerator, it processes easily terabytes,
he behaves like the one who has got, you know, a veeery big data.
In short, hardly anyone comprehends the nature of data and what’s going on,
but he, who is nicknamed as ‘geek’, is the hero of our time, a geniune one.
to many he seems a guest from the future – always on his own, bizarre, autistish,
but if to imagine that code is music, to understand him is no harder
than understand a musician.
‘cause the world is woven from code as it’s woven from music.
And while he seemingly quietly sits fixing screens of code like music scores,
his fingers are dancing upon keyboard, the beat is bursting into his earphones.
Backstage video
Geeks on Gig on stage
Stage design
Kinetic lights as a part of the venue design
‘Hello, world’ is the first phrase that every programming language learner starts with.
Neon lights as a part of decoration
No classic catering, the food court was stylized as festival bars and cafes, with a proper street food format.
Next to 2000 people had attended BYTE & BEAT fest in Kyiv, some of them were dancing barefoot and didn’t want to go home, which we consider a success. ; )
Credits:
Alisa Goloshapova — Executive Producer, project management
Mara Fauque — Art Director, design
Natasha Kto Nado — Creative Producer, copywriting
Andrew Reva — Video Production
Serge Demidov / The Cruising — Sound Producing
Anna Nagorna — Stage Manager
Liza Katz — Host Manager
VJ Yarkush — VJ support
Botanica — katering
Profi Inovations — Kinetic lights
