Digital Agrifood Summit

Co-Creating the Setting for a Look Into the Future

The Digital Agrifood Summit is a collaboration between Charles Sturt University and Food Agility CRC to bring together researchers, innovators, industry professionals and students to share knowledge and examine the future trajectory of the industry. In 2024, the event coordinators - Pyrus Events, had the idea to replace the stock footage normally used for stage graphics with a custom-made digital presentation. Instead of the generic visuals that backdropped previous summits, the client wanted to build more excitement around the four key pillars of the event; decarbonising agriculture, verifying sustainability, embracing AI, and ‘farm office of the future’. Custom animation offered the perfect opportunity.

Pyrus Events reached out to me and my co-designer for this project, Rach Viski, to create a suite of animations to be displayed on-stage during the conference portion of the summit. The brief was to use established brand visuals to create interest in each of the four key topics without distracting from the speakers. Drawing from the future-forward, technological themes, we created four simple looping animations to give the conference a professional feel and support the main points of interest of each session. We opted for an isometric view as it allowed us to showcase a range of elements, each connected and interacting in interesting ways.

Looking back after the summit, the use of custom illustration and animation to combine the branding, the specific elements in each session, and the overarching themes of connectivity and collaboration made for a successful step up from previous years. Each session of the conference was backed by a professionalism that helped set the right tone and allowed the rurally-hosted event to showcase an international appeal.