Brand Identity for the Outlook Firebrand Conference

Why did BUCK make a design conference look less polished?

BUCK developed a bold and human-first identity for The Outlook 2026 conference, themed 'Firebrand'. The design embraced expressive mark-making, tactile textures, and deliberate imperfection to reflect the creative friction driving the design industry forward. The identity extended across digital, environmental, and experiential touchpoints to create a cohesive and provocative brand experience.

Insights

The Outlook’s founder Grant Show said the audience is “quite exhausted with content, blandness, and this sort of race to sameness,” so BUCK framed Firebrand as a response to industry fatigue, not just a visual refresh.
Lead strategist Lucy Gavan positioned the theme around a tension between those who follow change and those who shape it, arguing that “meaningful progress rarely comes from consensus” and that Firebrand should feel like a human-first movement of deliberate agitation.
BUCK deliberately rejected tech-first polish and made the system feel handmade: collage, pen-to-paper sketches, scanner artifacts, expressive DIY mark-making, tactile textures, and loose hand-drawn elements colliding with precise layouts.
Art directors Liz Smith and Malisa Perona forced the process analogue — "we used collage, put pen to paper, and refamiliarised ourselves with the scanner" — and for Perona the iconography is "what truly drives the emotional side of the visual identity."
The visual system extended beyond the logo into flexible iconography, commanding typography and — per BUCK's own press release — raw black textures set against sharp orange and yellow, plus environmental graphics, wayfinding, social content, speaker communications, merchandise, and motion for TO26's one-day, three-track conference with 30+ presenters.