EmTech Invest × Davos
A closed-door investment event held in Davos during WEF week — no brand guidelines, 66 participants with individual demands, six weeks. My job was to turn ambiguity into a working system, decode every incoming brief into a task a designer could execute, and keep production on pace as the timeline kept tightening.
Why
EmTech Invest is a Swiss event company running closed-door investment gatherings for tech leaders and C-suite executives. They had no brand system — just a few inconsistent assets from previous work. The output had to look like it belonged in the Davos / WEF context. Everything else — visual direction, tone, priorities, what to make first — was open. At this scale, an undefined brief doesn't produce bad design. It produces paralysis.
What
I came in as art director — upstream of execution. The role: translate high-level client requests into actionable design deliverables, define the visual and communication system the designer could build within, and set strict priorities when every task felt equally urgent. We built the brand from near-zero — colour system, typography, tone of voice, the visual logic that made a fintech event feel Swiss without feeling sterile. From that foundation: 66 participant profiles, press wall, banners, badges, website assets, full event-lifecycle social content.
How
The real problem wasn't visual — it was structural. Briefs arrived as one-line requests: "make a presentation", "we need a banner". To extract what actually needed to be designed, I ran every incoming request through a Jobs-To-Be-Done lens: what is the user trying to accomplish, what decision is being made, what's the next action. Once that was clear, the deliverable became obvious. The client signed off, the designer executed. I set the sequence — what gets finished before anything else moves — so that mid-execution changes didn't collapse the timeline. Participant profiles alone were a chaos-management exercise: missing photos, retouching requests, last-minute bio edits, dropouts. Each request had a defined path through the system.
What it looks like
What we delivered
Each individual, many requiring photo research and retouching
Visual system built from scratch — color, type, tone, logic
Brief to post-event content, with constant scope changes throughout
Event ran during WEF week 2026 — Cryptopolitan press partner, UnDavos venue partner
The event ran on schedule during Davos / WEF week 2026. The final brand and visual system held across 66 participant profiles, the press wall, badges, banners, website assets, and social content. Press partner: Cryptopolitan. Venue partnership: UnDavos. A 2027 edition is in planning.
The participant intake was the bottleneck I'd fix first if I were starting over. Information came in through chats, direct messages, and scattered files — collecting it took as much time as designing with it. A single structured intake form (Google Forms or similar) sent to all 66 participants upfront, with required fields for photo, bio, social handles, and approvals, would have saved weeks of compilation and chasing. Operational, not creative — but operational decisions are where event timelines actually break.
Need a steady hand in chaos?
Events, tight deadlines, briefs that change daily — the work I do well.
Book an intro callor email art.androsov@gmail.com