CXI Conference 2023

For the 13th time, the CXI Conference 2023, Europe’s biggest Brand-Identity and Corporate-Design conference, took place on May 26th at Lokschuppen Bielefeld.

What feels like Christmas for designers, is a day long event with five brand-talks, always featuring the perspective of client and agency—both sharing their insights into the process of developing, inventing or reinventing, or sharpening a brand. This leads to interesting and honest insights into what it takes to shape a successful brand. Client and agency share not only the their achievements, but also failures and more difficult episodes of the process. The audience of 1,000 consists not only of designers, but also of professionals from the business sector and client side—both profiting from the talks held at CXI Conference 2023.

This year had again an exciting line-up
Škoda (Prag) × Strichpunkt (Berlin) provided insight into the re-design process, in which they decided to put special focus on color and let it unfold its effect for the brand. Founderland (Berlin) × R/GA (Berlin), a heartfelt project, driven by the idea of a nation-branding, creating a strong space for the people involved. Jokolade (München) × Designstudio Mathilda Mutant (Mainz) was a talk that made your mouth water, telling the story about creating a loving and colorful branding for an ethically produced chocolate. Veolia Towers Hamburg (Hamburg) × Sherpa Design (Hamburg), a strong re-brand for a basketball team, creating a strong visual for the Basketball-Bundesliga while bringing the community together. Meta (Menlo Park) × Saffron Consultants (Madrid) talked about their approach of a 3-dimensional dynamic branding—not only in the virtual but also in the 2D world.

Interrupted by a lunch break with delicious vegan food and a coffee break, there was like always the great opportunity to exchange ideas with the other creatives and visitors of the fair.

The conference was accompanied by some exciting booths of friends and colleagues of ours: The Institut für Buchgestaltung from Bielefeld (Institute of Book Design) with some great publications, print-studio Letterjazz who produced the amazing conference-boxes and name-cards (who also produce our beautiful high quality business cards), and Metapaper, providing the paper for the notebooks and programms for the conference who have also been a companion in various publications for years.

As always, the CXI was a blast and a great source of inspiration and encouragement! Thanks to the CXI team and Robert Paulmann (the initiator of the CXI) for having us again, we are always looking forward to this event—same for next year!

Images: © Samuel Akhtaruzzaman & Slanted Publishers