The 5th International SACO Conference

Client: The South African Cultural Observatory

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Period: April 2025 – November 2025

Arts, culture & heritage

01 The sneak peek

A milestone edition for a continental gathering

For the fifth SACO International Conference — held on the South African Cultural Observatory's tenth anniversary — we created the conference identity and ran the two-day hybrid event, convening 526 delegates across physical and virtual rooms to take stock of Africa's creative economy.

02 The liminal moment

The SACO International Conference is the biannual meeting-point for Africa's creative-economy thinkers, makers and policymakers — the room where a field takes stock of itself. Its fifth edition fell on the Observatory's tenth anniversary, and the moment asked for more than a logo. The conference needed an identity worthy of a leading research voice — in place of the literal illustration earlier editions had leaned on — alongside a seamless two-day hybrid that could hold 526 delegates across physical and virtual rooms, genuine accessibility, and coordination across the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, the City of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela University, over two provinces. The brief was the conference identity and a seamless event. The deeper task was to give a milestone gathering the gravity of the field it convenes.

03 The transformation

We built the conference identity as a system, not a set of decorations. It had to carry a leading research voice and move past the literal illustration of earlier editions. An abstract "X" did the work — marking the tenth-anniversary milestone, holding the intersection of creative disciplines, and scaling from a phone screen to architectural surfaces.

We held one strategic thread across many hands. Through our joint venture with Southern Cross Conferences the line was clear — we led identity, design and stakeholder communications; SCC ran registration, venue and suppliers — so neither communications nor operations crowded the other, and government, city and university stayed aligned to a single outcome.

Accessibility was a principle, not a checkbox. Plenaries were South African Sign Language–interpreted, and the conference bags were handmade linen from female-led cooperatives in Khayelitsha — the supply chain itself embodying the inclusive creative economy the conference existed to advance.

04 The craft

A system that scaled from a screen to a stadium

The "X" held across more than 50 design pieces — animated logo lock-ups, environmental work at architectural scale, Figma website prototypes, printed programme booklets — because it ran on a generative system rather than a constraint document. The guidelines enabled consistent creativity across every touchpoint.

05 The validation of purpose

The work held where it mattered: a milestone edition that gathered its field. Over two days, 526 delegates met across physical and virtual rooms to shape the future of Africa's creative economy — and the conference's own supply chain modelled the inclusive economy it was there to advance.