Announced Nov. 10, 2025 by Armin No Comments on 2025 Brand New Conference: Summary, Sights, and Video Highlights
Here is this year’s breakdown of the 16 sessions of the 2025 Brand New Conference that took place this past October 23 – 24 in Pittsburgh, PA, and which was awesome. (If you are looking at this in an RSS reader head on over to the real thing, too much heavy formatting). This is a very long post with a photo of each speaker, very brief summaries, and a brief highlight of their video/session, so give it a good time to load. A few other things worth bullet-pointing:
- A lot more photos from the event have been posted in this Flickr album.
- We also have a dedicated Flickr album for the design gallery.
- Registration is now open for the 2026 Brand New Conference in Nashville, TN, on September 17 – 18.
- This year’s identity case study coming in a couple of weeks.
All event photos by Sofia Negron. (On the grid images below you can click to open a bigger version.)
Day 1: Registration
Day 1: Opening Remarks + About the Identity
Unlike the two previous years, we edited ourselves and were able to present everything we wanted to about the identity. The segment starts at the 11:45 mark.
Day 1: Early Morning Speakers
Casey Martin
Founder + Executive Creative Director
Play
San Francisco, CA
Ash Phillips & Miro LaFlaga
Co-founders + Creative Directors
Six Cinquième
Montreal, QC
Day 1: Morning Break
Day 1: Late Morning Speakers
Amber Yoko Worrell & Kristie Feltner
Creative Director & Associate Design Director
Intuit Mailchimp
Atlanta, GA
Kiser Barnes
Chief Creative Officer + Partner
Red Antler
New York, UK
Day 1: Lunch Break
Day 1: Early Afternoon Speakers
Ebru Sile Goksel
Creative Director + Co-Founder
Studio Born
Miami, FL
Day 1: 15-minute Flings
Dan Rugh
Owner + Designer
CommonWealth Press
Pittsburgh, PA
Brette Richmond
Associate Director of Design and Publishing
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, PA
Michael Carroll
Founder
Charlotte’s Webb
Pittsburgh,PA
Day 1: Afternoon Break
Day 1: Late Afternoon Speakers
Barrington Reeves
Creative Director
Too Gallus
Glasgow, Scotland
Ren Rigby
Founder + Chief Design Officer
R/GA
New York, NY
Day 1: Summary
Day 2: Early-morning Vibes
Day 2: Brand New (the Blog) Summary
A look back at the most interesting stories from Brand New, the blog, in the last 12 months.
Day 2: Early Morning Speakers
Mike Smith & Chara Smith
Co-Founders + Creative Director & Copy Chief
Smith & Diction
Philadelphia, PA
Nada Hesham
Founder + Chief Creative Officer
40MUSTAQEL
Cairo, Egypt
Day 2: Morning Break
Day 2: Late Morning Speakers
Aaron Poe
Creative Director
Independent
California
Paolo Catalla
Founder + Principal Creative
Semi:Formal
Detroit, MI
Day 2: Fan Zone Details
Some details from the various interactive boards of “The Fan Zone”.
Day 2: Early Afternoon Speakers
Puno Puno & Mindy Nguyen
Executive Creative Director & Creative Director
ilovecreatives Studio
Los Angeles, CA
Day 2: 15-minute Flings
Jim Hargreaves
Design Director
Chen Design Associates
Pittsburgh, PA
Sidney Rose
Studio Owner
Houndstooth USA
Pittsburgh, PA
Larkin Werner
Partner + Creative Director
Wall-to-Wall Studios
Pittsburgh, PA
Day 2: Afternoon Break
Day 2: Late Afternoon Speakers
Mitch Wiesen
Designer + Illustrator
Mitch Wiesen Studio
Philadelphia, PA
Dan Cassaro & Dan Christofferson
Creative Directors + Partners
Young Jerks
Brooklyn, NY
Day 2: Summary and Closing Remarks
Day 2: After-party
Attendee Impressions
The amount of Instagram Stories we experienced this year was overwhelming in the best of ways… probably the most Storied conference to date. We tried to gather as many as possible in a couple of highlights bundles: Day 1 / Day 2. Below, some Instagram appreciations and we’ve gathered a lot of LinkedIn posts here (but they are very hard to embed and make them fit in the layout).
BNConf 2026: Nashville, TN
The 2026 Brand New Conference is scheduled for September 17 & 18 at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. Pre-sale registration available now. See you there?
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