CLIENT
Intelligence Squared U.S.
year
2017-2021
role
Creative Lead for Brand and Experience
Intelligence Squared U.S. (now "Open to Debate") is America's leading non-partisan debate organization. When I joined in 2017, the creative work looked like it had been built for a different decade: static PowerPoint slides on stage, illustration that read as clipart, a digital presence that didn't match the intellectual seriousness of the debates themselves. For an organization whose entire value proposition is the quality of argument and the weight of ideas, the brand needed to raise its visual status to meet those heights. I came in as a marketing coordinator and grew the role into the creative lead for brand and digital experience. Over four years I rebuilt the visual identity from the ground up, created a live web voting system that replaced physical remotes, and led the design of co-branded productions with partners including IBM and Bloomberg.
Original stage design and screen design
New art style
Voting results
The thesis was editorial. Intelligence Squared needed to feel like it belonged on the same page as The Atlantic or The New York Times, not as a news organization, but in terms of visual authority and intellectual heft. The debates were leading conversations on serious topics, and the design needed to carry that weight. What I moved away from was flat, literal illustration. What I moved toward was collage: layered paper textures, photographic elements, type as a graphic element. It grounded the work in something tactile and gave it the kind of density that editorial design uses to signal that ideas are being taken seriously. The goal was never decoration. Every debate topic has its own image — and that image needed to work as a thumbnail, as a stage backdrop, as a social asset, and as a print element. Building a system flexible enough to do all of that consistently, across dozens of debates per year, was the actual design problem.
Live Web Voting System
The existing audience voting system used physical remotes that staff had to transport, distribute, and collect at every event as the debate series traveled. Worked with our dev team, I replaced it with a web-based system tied directly to the live stream — audience members voted on their phones, the results fed into the broadcast in real time, and the same entry point connected to subscriptions, donations, and post-debate content. It simplified the operation, removed a significant logistical burden, and blended the voting experience to how online users already voted.
IBM: Project Debater
IBM's Project Debater was the first AI system designed to debate humans on complex topics. Intelligence Squared was chosen as the partner to debut it publicly at the THINK 2019 conference, a natural fit given debate is the organizational DNA. Working with IBM's creative team, I built a co-branded identity that drew from Project Debater's visual language while holding space for the duality inherent in debate itself. The event reached 1.5 million views on Twitter and was covered by CNN, Bloomberg, and CNET.
Bloomberg: That's Debatable
In fall 2020, Intelligence Squared partnered with Bloomberg on a broadcast debate series moderated by journalist John Donvan. Produced during the pandemic for a virtual audience, the brief required a visual identity that worked simultaneously for Bloomberg's broadcast standards, Intelligence Squared's brand, and IBM Watson as an integrated sponsor. The design had to function across three distinct visual contexts without flattening any of them. Each episode drew thousands of votes and the premiere was covered by Fortune and other outlets.
IBM Project Debater
Bill Nye
Intro and screens for "That's Debatable"