The 21-year-old PopTech conference, hosted every year in Maine, is focused on bringing individuals together to create a community that devotes themselves to achieving a particular goal for betterment - whether that be in regards to humanity, politics, science, environment, culture, the arts or entertainment.
The theme this year is quite fittingly Instigate, or the idea of inciting change - not adapting to the current climate but rather challenging the established norm in an intelligent manner, and continuing a movement for difference. The PopTech team invited Collins to design Instigate.
When Collins first met with Leetha Filderman, president of PopTech, she told the agency that the purpose of the event is to "explore, inspire, instigate and discover a shared potential that extends well beyond the reach of individual aspiration." Collins' goal is to push the limits of what is possible - to create new territory for collaborative exploration. The role of a speaker is to instigate and inspire the next bodies of work and next chapters in life - be that collaboratively or as individuals.
The agency's creative direction emphasizes the idea of subjective views, shifting perspectives, and varying lenses. It expresses the notion of many individual elements that come together to create powerful, stronger, unified ideas. An explosion of many pieces coming together to form a whole, if you will. On the flip side, the idea of action and reaction was emphasized: how might the fractures in the idea's language extend, or have an effect on other aspects? How might these fractures impact the way in which you perceive the larger message?