Building the Bubble
The BubbleCon Experience
Bubble isn't just a website or a technology, it's a transformative no-code environment for builders, a vibrant global community, and a powerful movement that empowers people to create sophisticated digital solutions without writing a single line of code. The challenge of translating this digital-first brand into an immersive physical and virtual experience that would unite their worldwide community was many fold. Experience, design, narrative, and charging stations! What emerged through our creative collaboration was a color-rich, spatially dynamic celebration that not only showcased Bubble's innovative platform but embodied its core mission of making the complex beautifully accessible.
Defining the Challenge
BubbleCon, hosted in Bubble's hometown of NYC, was both a virtual and in-person event. For those who attended physically, it offered speakers, live hackathons, networking opportunities, and the chance to dig deep into the tool that had made their business go from bedroom to broadway, to use a turn of phrase. For virtual participants, we needed to craft a bespoke series of learning-based presentations that would supercharge users and inspire the community.
2023 was the first conference Bubble had held since its inception. While they had users across the web, chat sites, answer pages, and an active community somewhere in the depths of Discord, they had never brought these users together in one place to celebrate and collaborate in real time. They wanted an event that would shine, shimmy, and shake, one where the product came to life but the brand remained the star.
Embracing the Bubble Aesthetic
The Bubble brand is, well, bubbly: circles, bright colors, primary shapes, and dynamic layouts drive the brand forward, showcasing both the power of the product and its accessibility. There's a little bit of candy shop meets tech haven in the brand, with behaviors that aren't set in stone, rather they are free to interact with one another based on where they meet.
As the traditional tech language of binary, code, functions, and other techy symbols didn't relate to Bubble's no-code philosophy, we needed to craft an environment that would showcase that they were the knife that cut through the noise of developing software and solutions.
Building the Environment
Working with the event team handling the program organization, my creative team and I focused on infusing the space with the bubbliness needed. We wanted people to be immersed in the event through the information, the space, and the virtual portal.
We designed materials spanning print, web, animations, and swag that completed the event's look, feel, and flavor. Our approach softened the brand in the space with animations, heightened the brand in minds with consistent and active presentation styles, and fused the virtual with the physical with broadcast level graphics that gave remote viewers a sense of presence
Creating a Spatial Journey
As bubble is a sphere, a central space in which people act, work, interact, and learn, we designed the venue to give a sense of gradient progression throughout. We wanted attendees to feel as though they were stepping into the bubble.
From the entrance, we started with a scattering of warm tones, light in nature, giving a playful sense of welcome. The main stage was drenched in sunshine yellow and ambers that pulled both in-person and online viewers into the presentations. Speakers stood in front of a 32 foot long, 10 foot high backdrop that created an environment, not just a presentation screen.
Moving through the space, we called attention to the NYC landscape, playing off the shape and style of subway posters as we progressed the gradient toward cooler tones. In the networking hub, we splattered bubbles and showed formal progression transitioning from reds to purples.
The stairwell functioned as a color slide, guiding attendees to the second stage where more tactical information was presented. Here, we used a larger suite of shapes to create a perspective backdrop for the presenters and draped the space in deep, calming hues that bordered on ashy eggplant, midnight lavender, royal violet.
The Immersive Result
The culmination of all this work was a dive into the sea of Bubble. Once inside the event, both physical and virtual attendees were drenched in the brand space. Our designs were dynamic enough to spark action and commentary, while also being formal and staid enough to create borders, space, zones, and mood.
Though some graphics reached impressive heights – 25 feet into the rafters – the experience remained approachable enough to give the event a human-scale feel. And that perfectly captured the essence of Bubble itself: a powerful tool that makes building and deploying apps and tools personable.
By transforming a digital-first platform into a physical and virtual space that remained true to its essence, we helped Bubble create not just an event, but an experience that embodied the very possibilities they enable for their users, making the complex simple, the technical accessible, and the digital tangibly human.