EXPLORERS FESTIVAL 2024

Event Branding

CHALLENGE

Rebrand the National Geographic Society’s signature annual event, Explorers Festival, while maintaining brand consistency and audience recognition, and differentiating the key art from the previous year.

INSIGHT

For nearly a decade, the National Geographic Society has showcased the power of connection through Explorers Festival, our signature annual event. Explorers Festival brings together our global network of Explorers under one roof to learn about one another’s work, share insights and best practices, and inspire those around them to care for and protect our planet.

Explorers Festival is a prime example of the collaborative environment that has fueled the Society’s tremendous growth and impact throughout its 136-year history. The exchange of knowledge that takes place during main-stage events, trainings, and workshops empowers our Explorers to continue pursuing innovative solutions to the planet’s most pressing challenges.

In addition to fostering connection and collaboration, Explorers Festival demonstrates the power of collective impact. Attendees witness the significant outcomes of our Explorers’ work and research — outcomes that can influence public policy, protect species from harmful threats, and inspire greater engagement with the issues people care about most.

The connection, collaboration, and collective impact showcased at Explorers Festival — the Explorer Mindset — are strengthened by our Explorers’ curiosity, which lies at the heart of their efforts to protect and expand knowledge about how to be good stewards of the planet. Their curiosity drives them to take risks, uncover the planet’s mysteries, and advance scientific knowledge with a shared sense of empathy and compassion, while empowering the next generation of changemakers to follow in their footsteps.

This thread of curiosity can be visually represented through the Society’s iconic tricolor flag, which accompanies our Explorers on expeditions around the world. The colors of the Society’s flag symbolize key elements of exploration: blue for the sky, brown for the land, and green for the sea. At Explorers Festival, this thread of curiosity is interwoven with the threefold powers of connection, collaboration, and collective impact.

Ultimately, the Society’s fabric represents our mission: to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world. Explorers Festival brings this fabric to life by highlighting the connection, collaboration, and collective impact that are woven together through the shared thread of curiosity.

SOLUTION

By evolving the previous Explorers Festival branding through the deconstruction of the iconic Society flag, the reimagined “Fabric Flag” key art became a vector graphic representation of the Explorer community. Its woven stripes illustrate the connectivity among community members.

An alternate option, the Half Flag, is an abbreviated version of the full icon that forms a unique graphic element through the inclusion of a yellow divider line, signifying a flagpole from which the graphic flag flies proudly. The yellow divider line also serves as a separator that pairs the key art element with the Explorers Festival branding.

RESULTS

The feedback from senior leadership stakeholders has been overwhelmingly positive, with one member calling it the best representation of an Explorers Festival to date. When unveiled at the opening of the Festival in June 2024, the venue was completely transformed through branded experiential elements, signage, video, motion graphics, and digital experiences, bringing the signature event to life.

Due to the overwhelmingly favorable response from both attendees and Explorers, the “Fabric Flag” branding package has since become a fully integrated component and cornerstone of event awareness for subsequent Festivals, including the first large-scale event held at the newly renovated downtown D.C. campus and the Museum of Exploration in June 2026.