When San Diego and Tijuana were collectively named the Design Capital of the World for 2024, we were thrilled. This is a huge honor—previous cities that received this designation include Valencia, Mexico City, Seoul, Helsinki, and Torino. San Diego Design Week was a cornerstone event of our community’s spotlight on the world stage, and VSSL seized the opportunity to do something big.
The theme for this year’s San Diego Design Week is “Belonging.” According to the website, “This year, our program is all about design that builds a sense of belonging and deepens our connections. We’ll dive into how we’re creating spaces, events, and experiences that support and include everyone.” Our challenge was to find what the idea of belonging meant to us. What kind of experience could we create that welcomed all types of design, facilitated participation from across borders, and felt rooted in our brand?
Creating the Concept
We began by unpacking the different elements we knew the event had to include and brainstormed ways to bring them to life. Through numerous post-it note sessions, themes and tactics began to emerge.
The heart of where we landed was an experience that celebrated the work of our individuals but somehow combined them into a tapestry of creative work from our region. In that way, it takes the focus away from the talent and potential of one person or design discipline and reveals the cumulative power of combining unique perspectives and talents into something bigger. It’s more about the sum of the parts in our community than it is about the individual pieces.
When brainstorming how to execute the idea, we determined that we wanted to create an experience with digital and in-person components so that cross-border participation was more accessible. We also knew that a key piece of it should showcase the amazing creativity in our community—to show the world why we received the designation. Lastly, we wanted to create an environment where folks would feel compelled to create and contribute to this collective art installation.
Oh, and it had to somehow incorporate something nautical.
Online Submissions, Generative Programming, Projection Mapping, and a Sailboat
During one of our brainstorming sessions, someone said, “What if we projection-mapped art onto a boat?”. It felt exciting because experiential art has been a growing trend in culture (Meow Wolf, Color Factory, Van Gogh Exhibition), but daunting because it was something completely new for us. As we fleshed out the details, we decided to create an online submission portal so that anyone in San Diego or Tijuana could submit their work, whether they could come to an event or not. Their submissions would be combined using motion, layering, and a bit of distortion, revealing new work every couple of seconds. Then that would get projection-mapped onto a 16’ sailboat in the middle of a massive room at an event that is part art installation, part networking, and part celebration.
And here’s the kicker—the content being projected on the boat is not pre-programmed and totally random. That means two things. 1. The boat will never look the same minute to minute because it’s continually changing. 2. Folks would be able to create and submit work at the event and see it up on the boat in a matter of minutes.
Pulling it Off
After we settled on our idea, we needed a memorable name that captured the concept and was clear about the event. We settled on “Beacon of Belonging: A Collaborative Design Experience.” After having a name, VSSL explored branding to bring the concept to life. Below is the concept we settled on because it captured the idea of combination by layering different letterforms and mediums to create something brand new. It also focused on the idea of a beacon, which refers to a light or lighthouse but also a source of inspiration. Lastly, it layers in textures and distorted typography to relate to how the submissions would animate on the boat.
VSSL also designed a multitude of promotional materials, including a submission portal for artists, makers, and creators to submit work to. To promote submitting and attending, we created organic and boosted social content, email campaigns, printed flyers, and ads for local publications in San Diego.
For the generative behavior and projection mapping, our team partnered with a SoCal-based creative technologist, Christian Kastner, to bring the concept to life. We explored various animation styles for the work and ultimately landed on something extremely layered with grainy and imperfect edges and a mesmerizing animation style.
The Night of the Event
The event turned out better than we had hoped, with no hiccups. We had a full bar with free drink tickets for those who submitted to the boat before or at the event. To incentivize folks to stay, we auctioned off VSSL swag every hour to those who submitted. And it worked—for the most part, most folks stayed for a couple of hours, if not the whole time. People also just seemed to enjoy networking and watching the boat.
We exceeded our expectations by getting more RSVPs than the other 70 events in San Diego Design Week, aside from the official opening ceremony held by the World Design Capital Committee. Shoutout to our friends at The One Club for helping to promote the event through their channels.
In the end, we feel that so much of the success is due to a really strong concept and a culturally relevant, interactive solution. If you have an event to throw or even just a big idea that could become an event, we’d love to help! Reach out and let’s create something memorable for attendees and impactful for your business.