This Saturday saw the first Leeds Digital Festival Design Day, the digital festival has been through several different incarnations over the past few years and the purpose of the design day was in part to make a bit of a break with the past and give the event a fresh new look and feel.

But there was one small drawback...

This meant getting up early on a Saturday morning to head into Leeds and the Round Foundry Media Centre. At 10am a band of about 20 of Leeds's best and brightest (and in my case still half asleep) digital marketers and designers had gathered, with the aim of delivering a new brand, logo, and typeface in just 6 hours.

We divided into groups, which ran along the lines of 2 marketers, 1 designer, and 1 student or recent graduate, and got started. It was fascinating to see the different ways in which each group got to grips with the task. Some jumped up and started brainstorming on Post-it notes and sticking them to the walls. Others jumped straight into Adobe Illustrator and started sketching ideas. We started by talking through the brief and our own feelings about the Festival. It was slightly amusing to discover that within our group of four, despite all working in digital in Leeds, none of us had attended any of the past events so we started by looking at why we'd not attended and exploring some of the prejudices that the name "Leeds Digital Festival"  conjures up. Thinking it sounded a bit municipal and worthy.

We then decided to make the day a hell of a lot harder for ourselves by renaming the event entirely and ended up spending most of the rest of the morning kicking around ideas for what to call it. A nice lunch in the sunshine at The Midnight Bell helped, and then in the afternoon we pushed on to pull together our presentation for 4pm when all 5 groups came together to share their ideas. We unfortunately, didn't get through to the final three, but it was really interesting to see the different approaches the groups had taken (and also the areas of overlap), and certainly, between all the groups there are some brilliant elements to take forward.

The next Leeds Digital Festival event is the Hack Day (Date TBC), at which they'll be taking forward the branding elements and creating the website and other interactive bits and pieces, so if you've got technical skills, get along and get involved!