Expanded Conference 2026

A visual identity and trailer for the Expanded Conference 2026, an event affiliated with Ars Electronica, held at FH Oberösterreich, Campus Hagenberg. The project follows one idea from first concept to final film: a modular 3D building-block system, procedurally arranged through a custom-built Blender tool and pushed through concept development, modelling, an automated grid generator, color and material design, sound, animation, rendering and post. The result is a roughly one-minute trailer plus a full family of posters, key visuals and social assets.

Stills from the finished trailer. Every scene is built from the same modular block library, 2×2m units carrying their own mechanical detail, from switches and dials to displays and cross markers, recombined into dense, machine-like compositions.

I was on-site for all three days of the event. Seeing the key visuals and the trailer run on the big screen for the first time, in person, hit completely differently than watching it on a monitor.

As the story moves forward, the grid fills in. What begins as a nearly blank white surface with a single active switch gradually multiplies into overlapping colors, materials and module types, the visual arc that carries the entire trailer.

The main event poster is built around the final cube design and its full color palette, the same visual language established in the trailer, condensed into a single key image. A second poster for the Expanded Play side event carries its own set of gaming-inspired modules, joysticks and controller-style buttons, in a deliberately different palette: black, violet, white and green on a dark, glowing background, set apart from the conference's brighter look.

Behind the final trailer lies a longer path, from early concept boards through modelling, a custom procedural tool, and extensive color exploration.

'Designed Motion: Movement without intent.' The first concept treats motion as a designed state rather than a means to an end, mechanical, precise, and without a defined outcome, like a machine built purely to move. Its modular, block-based language became the visual foundation the final trailer was built on.

'Refracted Systems: Light as process.' The alternate direction shifted focus from mechanics to optics: light bending through glass and prisms as the source of movement itself. Early material tests looked promising, but the concept was ultimately set aside in favor of the more flexible modular approach.

The final module library, modeled from scratch in plain clay so the geometry could be judged on its own. Controls are cut directly into each block rather than added on top, so every piece reads as a single, integrated form, a decision that took the longest to get right, growing into a library of more than thirty interlocking block, button and switch modules.

The backbone of the whole project: a custom Python tool built inside Blender that procedurally arranges modules across a grid, with control over density, module weighting, empty space and color. What started as a reduced red-black-white test palette evolved into the fuller, toy-like color language used in the final trailer, the same tool behind all 43 scenes.

An early, rough blockout of the recurring 3×3×3 cube, still in the original red-black-white scheme.

The first real prototype, once the module shapes had been refined further.

A new generation of the cube built from the finished final modules, still red-led, but with materials and tones already shifting.

The fully colorful variant that followed several rounds of feedback, every face a different hue, no white left at all.

The final design: white brought back in for balance, and the palette trimmed by one color for a cleaner result. This became the project's logo and appears across nearly every key visual.

The full set of color combinations tested for the cube, all of which went on to be reused across the trailer's different scene environments.

From a rough blockout to a fully procedural, 43-scene trailer, the Expanded Conference 2026 project traces one system growing in complexity at every stage: module design, a custom generative tool, color exploration, sound and final render pipeline all feeding into a single coherent identity.

A machine built to move, not to finish.