Scale a brand for developers

We joined IBM TechXchange in 2023. The brand was new. It already had a lot to carry.

TechXchange brought together IBM users, developers and technologists through community programs, training, credentials, events and a flagship conference. Different audiences and different needs all had to work under one name.

TechXchange covered IBM Champions, user groups, the conference, training and credentials, Dev Days, hackathons, bootcamps, webinars and awards. Each program had its own audience, calendar and needs. Each had to feel like TechXchange while still being recognizably its own thing.

Sometimes that difference came through color, sometimes icons or photography, often a mix of all three. Every piece had to hold three layers at once: the character of the program, the TechXchange identity and the wider IBM brand underneath.

TechXchange was already serving a large community, while the flagship conference kept growing. The brand system had to keep pace without turning every new request into a new visual direction.

The first request was a presentation template. We didn’t try to design the whole system upfront. We let the work show us what the system needed.

A campaign asset would reveal a gap in the guidelines, so the guidelines grew. A new program needed its own look, so a toolkit was added. Over three years, that became a toolkit for TechXchange as a whole, program toolkits underneath it, and templates IBM teams and partners could use without us.

We also kept the current assets in one place, so nobody had to ask which version was right.

A campaign often started on one piece. We would bring a few directions, the IBM team would make the call, and then we would build the chosen one out across everything the campaign needed.

Social tiles, email banners, why-attend flyers, one-pagers and website assets. Then the next campaign, and the next program.

Over three years, the work went far beyond campaign assets: a conference opening deck, a training and certification badge system, identities for hackathons and Dev Days, infographics, presentation templates, print and event merch, an award, stickers, a 3D animation, an LED-wall video edit and even a patch for a space suit.

Most of the work was visual. But some briefs needed help with the message as well. We supported audience research and persona development, wrote guidelines teams could use on their own, and worked on messaging for campaigns and community stories.

Different teams came to us directly: a campaign for one, a conference deadline for another, a one-off request for a third. At the same time, we stayed in sync with IBM’s lead designers, so teams could move quickly without creating their own version of the brand.

A single TechXchange identity that could work across programs, audiences and formats while staying connected to IBM. A collection of reusable brand and program toolkits, presentation and content templates, and a shared set of current assets that IBM teams and partners could keep using without us.

What began with one presentation template grew into a practical system supporting campaigns, conferences and the everyday creative work in between.