Web Summit Investor Lounge

Role: Art Direction, Motion Direction, Design Systems, and Visual Design

Challenge

For the 2022 Web Summit in Lisbon, PitchBook set out to create a destination for investors and founders that would stand apart from a traditional event booth. The goal was to design an immersive lounge experience that reflected the PitchBook brand, encouraged meaningful conversations, and showcased the company's products and insights within one of the world's largest technology conferences.

Approach

Working alongside copywriters, graphic designers, motion designers, and an external experiential design agency, our team developed a cohesive creative direction for the entire lounge experience. We established the event theme, crafted the messaging, and designed the visual language that carried throughout the space, while collaborating closely with the agency to ensure every concept could be successfully translated into the physical environment.

The attendee journey informed every design decision. Static graphics, motion content, and interactive experiences were strategically integrated throughout the lounge to educate visitors, encourage exploration, and support conversations between founders, investors, and the PitchBook team. Close coordination between the internal creative team and external fabrication partner ensured the final build aligned with both the creative vision and the venue's technical requirements.

Outcome

The completed lounge delivered a cohesive branded environment that combined environmental graphics, digital content, and interactive touchpoints into a unified visitor experience. In addition to supporting attendee engagement throughout the event, the project established a baseline for measuring QR code interactions within the space, creating a benchmark that informed the planning and evaluation of future experiential marketing initiatives.

There were two main walls on the exterior of the lounge that had significant foot traffic. Our team utilized those spaces to surface insights related to emerging technologies from PitchBook Institutional Research reports. The larger of the two walls utilized a treemap data visual to create an interactive experience that showcases deeper insights related to four emerging technology spaces: mobility tech, artificial intelligence and machine learning, agtech, and information security.

Lounge exterior

Exterior wall with 4 interactive pocket-doors that open to reveal more detailed data and insights related to specific technology verticals. QR codes within drive to report download pages.

Exterior wall with backlit circular containers that showcase insights from PitchBook reports. QR codes here drive to report download pages. Other circular containers were used to tease the larger green wall inside the lounge.

The investor lounge interior has a complimentary Moleskin monogramming station, coffee bar, reserved meeting booths, demo kiosks, tables with open seating, and a catering area. The space’s primary intent is networking and meeting, so the our team’s approach was to limit potential distractions on exterior walls, and only utilize areas where attendees had down time for messaging.