MiXiT is a well-known conference in Lyon, especially among developers and agilists professionals. However, in 2017, we hope to attract an even wider audience; which is partly the goal of our branding work. Our redesign plays with our local side. It also confirm our choice to make our conferences accessible to a more mainstream audience. The result is a brand new identity, reflecting more clearly our values. Do not hesitate to contact us, whether you are a regular or a new participant, your opinion matters.

Context and challenges

MiXiT is a mixture of technologies, participants, subjects... In short, it is a joyful mess but one that can be quite difficult to define, even for us! Consequently, the public image of the conference was rather vague, both for the general public and for foreign speakers. It was necessary to define ourselves more clearly!

Process

In order to define what "MiXiT" is, we began by listing words that came to mind... Palme d'Or for the "uncomfortable split"!

Two main ideas emerged from this brainstorming; 1. our commitment to common values and 2. a strong connection to our local environment. MiXiT is done BY and FOR a community, of which we are a part. This is the path we have chosen to explore in our redesign, while obviously keeping in mind the idea of diversity, which is the core of our actions.

Visual Identity

MiXiT

Mix-ai-tee, mix, mix-it... How should I pronounce it? I go to / at Mix-IT? Our identity change begins with an new official writing and pronunciation. From now on, you should be able to say without thinking twice; I am going to MiXiT. [Mɪks ɪt]. Period.

Local

Our redesign had to explore our local identity, in order to locate us within Lyon landscape, just as Snowcamp belongs to Grenoble, or Take Off to Lille. We encourage local partners, producers, speakers to work with us at the conference, why not show it on our website too? And yes, we are convinced that it is possible to find a Rhônalpine origin to pancakes!

Logo

We have totally reworked our logo to give it a more modern look, and make sure it represented our values better. The X has been designed to reflect our will to support diversity (X / Y for example) while keeping in mind the IT part of it, which is the core of our business (do you see the chevron?).

Color chart

The colors of our new identity are also more meaningful. Purple represents compromise, diversity. Orange is more dynamic.

Tracks identification

What defines MiXiT best than the talks we offer? We have defined some main categories, which will be easily recognisable on the program thanks to a new color system.

The heart

MiXiT, the conference with crêpes and the heart. This tagline, coming from who knows where, probably as a joke at the time, finally stucked. We understand the crêpes part. The heart, a little less. And yet, the heart is the team organising the conference on a voluntary basis during lunchs, evenings, or weekend breaks. It is also the passion of our work, shared by the participants. Finally, it is our speakers who are here to open our minds. It was therefore important for us to symbolise this idea in the new design.

New website

In addition to having a unclear brand image, we also knew we had to address our website's UX, which was not the best! After a lot of work both on the front and back-end of MiXiT, we ended up doing a complete overhaul of the website. It is therefore with great pride that we are introducing today our new homepage.

The site is still a Work In Progress, which we will expand as we go along. Among other things, we want to improve access to conferences, via a more accessible schedule. The structure of the site has been simplified, many pages have been reworked in depth… In short, there is a lot of changes that we will talk about very soon in an upcoming article.

Talk soon!