Year: 2020

Tools: Adobe Illustrator

Employer: ELSI (Earth-Life Science Institute) is an international, interdisciplinary scientific research institute hosted by TITech (Tokyo Institute of Technology). TITech is a national research university and one of the most prestigious universities in Japan.

I was asked to design a poster for ELSI's 9th International Symposium. The Symposium is an annual event that occurs every January. The institute designates a Symposium Organising Committee (SOC), which is a group of researchers who are tasked with organising the event and working with me to create a poster and flyer advertising it. They decide upon a theme and topics for the Symposium, then invite researchers (both locally and from abroad) to come and speak. Researchers from around the world can register to attend, where they can also learn about research outside of their field, network and create new research collaborations.

The SOC discussed their ideas with me and asked me to come up with some drafts. Since the theme of the event is "Science in Society", they asked me to emphasise this in the design, but not go too over-the-top with very common or typical symbols of science. They gave me some images that they liked, all of which had gradients, so I tried to incorporate this.

My first action was to brainstorm and search online for various imagery that could symbolise science and society and weren't too cliche. I doodled what I liked down in a notebook. From there, I began experimenting with combining the two in rough sketches. Seeing what worked, what didn't, if it could be tweaked to work or if it was better to move on to a new idea. If I really liked the thought of combining two concepts, I did more online research into images, logos or symbols of the two to arrive at new ideas of merging them.

I included a flask for science, Earth for society and lots of gradients. This was my first idea, which is often not the best, but always helps to get things started.

This combined a fingerprint (society) and a phylogenetic tree (science) with a gradient inside it. This was one of my favourites because I felt it was simple and attractive.

I went for something cuter that I hoped would convey the message that science is an integral part of society (which was something the SOC wanted to communicate), but it was difficult to make it obvious the flowers represented society without making this design far too busy. One of the SOC members loved this, but the others felt it was better to move away from the "lab coat = scientist" stereotype and were worried their theme would not be easily communicated here.

I had another meeting with the SOC. They chose the second design, but said the fingerprint might remind too many people of crime or something to do with personal information rather than science.

The SOC had several requests:

- A skyline instead to represent society with the phylogenetic tree inside it.

- Make it clear the Symposium was in Tokyo because the capital of Japan is a highly attractive locale.

- The image must communicate progression or advancement.

For their first request they showed me a sketch with the lower half of a globe and a skyline on top (semi-circle with flat half pointing up and skyline on top), but I decided the upper half of a globe and a skyline following its curve would fit better with a circular phylogenetic tree and give it a more dynamic appearance.

For their second and third request, I proposed using more ancient buildings at one end and then more recently built buildings at the other end because Japan as a country has plenty of unique ancient architecture and Tokyo boasts the second tallest structure in the world: Tokyo Skytree. I already envisioned a gradual rising in height from lower, traditional buildings to the towering Tokyo Skytree. This would give the SOC the communication of progress and advancement and also make for some fascinating imagery. Especially combined with the gradient.

I once again took to the internet to research famous landmarks (preferably in Tokyo) across Japan of different heights and from different eras. I believe the first three were from Kyoto and outside of Tokyo, but then I had the Rainbow Bridge, Tokyo Station, a shinkansen (bullet train) and Tokyo Skytree.

I had to have these as a silhouette and filled with a gradient, so I collected images from online, opened them in Illustrator and traced them using the pen tool and reflect for perfect symmetry. I joined the two halves together and placed them on my phylogenetic tree hemisphere. I created ever larger rings and used minus front to create gaps, then made small rectangles that I copy-pasted at different angles and placed at random throughout the skyline silhouette to give a sense of the phylogenetic tree continuing through them. Finally, after saving backups of all these elements, I merged them into one shape and filled them with a gradient.

Below is my first draft:

The SOC liked where the design was going, but had further comments.

- The inner section looked more like a circuit board than a phylogenetic tree.

- I really wanted to keep the Tokyo Tower on the right straight, but they said it looked like it was then tilting since it didn't follow the curve like the other buildings.

- They asked if I could add something to make it more obvious this was supposed to be Earth and that the Symposium will be held in Japan.

- They couldn't agree on removing or keeping the bridge, but I felt it would look a bit empty without it.

In response, I recreated the entire design and shifted the globe to the right in order to keep Tokyo Tower perpendicular to the surface. I also added a globe with a section sliced out of it and changed the gradient to suggest the viewer is seeing the layers inside the Earth.

The SOC wanted to see many different combinations of the graphics and see how it looked with X part below and above Y part, etc. So I created many different versions, but with the same basic design.

Finally, they asked if I could include a famous European monument instead of Tokyo Tower to convey it is international and not only Japanese. In the end, they decided Tokyo Tower was a key feature of the design and went with one of the designs I shared from version three.

Symposium registration and attendance rose 339% and 101% from 2015 to 2021. I also believe my designs for this international event contributed towards the 56% increase in researchers hired from TITech and 67% increase in new researchers hired from abroad.

In the final version seen on display, the SOC made some changes to the text and appearance of the graphic, but the basic design is the same. The poster on the left is also my design, which can be seen at 2021 Public Lecture.

The other posters on display to the left were also designed by me. They can be found here: