Sunday, September 27th, 2009...7:12 pm
The story behind the InfoCamp Seattle 2009 artwork
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by Aaron Louie
The concept
When we started talking about the visual theme we wanted for InfoCamp Seattle 2009, it was about the time of Obama’s inauguration. We were witnessing the end of one political dynasty and the birth of another. The economy was falling apart, and everyone was a strange mix of depressed and hopeful. We needed a concept that would not only cheer people up but remind us of our ideals and compel us to get down to work.
What inspired us
We were particularly reminded of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) poster art from the Great Depression. We appreciated the idea of WPA as an effort to break the country out of its collective funk, get people focused on creating new things, and evoke pride in their communities – and we just liked their posters. Additionally, we wanted to express the DIY nature of InfoCamp, so artists like Nikki McClure came to mind. Her handmade cutout paper art focuses on the interaction between people and their environment. And then there was this need to have something unbearably cute and irreverent, like Natalie Dee‘s webcomics, which feature adorable creatures saying bizarre things.
I generated a host of failed ideas featuring everything from “Keep Calm and Carry On” parodies to hipster librarians wielding shovels to unicorns and antelopes embracing marshmallow “InfoCamp” letters. Nothing really seemed to spark, until I started exploring the idea of cute monsters talking about InfoCamp, which evolved into birds talking about InfoCamp. And then… I found a WPA poster featuring a panda hugging a tree – which had all the elements I needed.
But… birds?
“Birds-of-a-feather” (or “BOF”) sessions are a fixture at standard conferences. While they do advance conversation and thought within a specific sub-discipline, BOF is an idea antithetical to InfoCamp. InfoCamp is not your standard conference – we want to encourage cross-pollination of ideas among disciplines. So our birds are conversing with birds unlike themselves. And InfoCamp is the place for that conversation to happen.
Once we settled on the bird theme, the ideas just kept coming. Joshua Walker had the great idea to create birds for each breakout room at InfoCamp. That led to the generation of a bunch more birds, which you’ll see at the event. Or you can buy one of our special edition tshirts featuring the auxiliary cast of birds.
All the InfoCamp artwork is Creative Commons licensed, so feel free to remix it as you please! Just make sure to attribute the artwork to us (e.g., “Original InfoCamp art by Aaron Louie and Joshua Walker. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.”). An Adobe Illustrator-editable PDF of the poster and the bird menagerie (pictured below) may be downloaded here:
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