Swindon’s history as an industrial and manufacturing town is common knowledge. What is less well-known beyond its borders is that the North Wiltshire town on the M4 corridor is a major tech hub. In fact, it is the third fastest-growing tech hub in the UK, only outgunned by London and Bristol. Given that fact, it was perhaps no surprise that a one-year consultation process initiated by Swindon Borough Council and Switch On To Swindon and their creative partners to come up with the next ‘big idea’ to promote the town produced a tech-focused result.
‘Tech Swindon: digi_tech network’ is designed to showcase Swindon’s existing capacity – some 3,000 tech-based businesses employing 28,000 people – and crucially, to attract both new companies and skilled tech professionals to the town. The hotly anticipated ‘big idea’ was unveiled at a packed event at Nationwide Building Society, who were also confirmed as Tech Swindon’s first sponsor.
The project will work with organisations and business groups to run a series of tech events for start-ups, SMEs and larger companies that either provide digi-tech products and services or are reliant on it to do business. The initial year-long campaign will culminate in a two-day summit in spring 2020 with high-profile speakers in venues across the town and a projected 1,000 attendees per day and the event broadcast via digital channels.
Jazzbones’ remit was to take the SBC created 'Big Idea' and develop the Tech Swindon brand identity and marketing collateral that has synergy with the existing Switch On To Swindon’s identity, but with a tech-influenced twist.
Our close working relationship with that organization and Swindon Borough Council on projects like the Visit Swindon website means we are adept at interpreting their needs, in this case producing exciting design concepts with a futuristic dot landscape logo and tech-inspired typography. Our ability to handle rapid turnarounds was also to the fore when we produced some stunning animations around the Tech Swindon logo for the Nationwide event in just a few days.
In fact, one of the USPs that sets Jazzbones apart from our competitors and bigger agencies is that we are not bound by set-in-stone internal processes that slow down the creative process. In this particular case, our agile design team ‘quickly’ got the Tech Swindon brief, breaking down complex propositions into a simple and clear approach and then seamlessly developing concepts to completion at a really fast pace, all that while maintaining quality and always considering the strategic objectives and implications of the campaign.
Tech Swindon is a ‘big idea’ with a very big future when it comes to attracting even more forward-thinking companies and tech professionals to Swindon, and Jazzbones will be at the forefront of its development giving a major campaign an innovative and distinctive visual identity.
tech-swindon.com
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