The TEDxPhiladelphia Team came to Oat Foundry with a goal: take their sign from the previous year (designed and fabricated by NextFab) and refresh it for the “And Justice for All” event held on June 11th, 2015. The caveat: the event was in 9 days.

TEDx is an international community that organizes TED-style events anywhere and everywhere — celebrating locally-driven ideas and elevating them to a global stage. TEDx events are produced independently of TED conferences; each event curates speakers on their own, but based on TED’s format and rules.

Oat Foundry came to a conclusion regarding the design: typical TEDx signs attempt to hide their support structure, but always seem to fall short. The letters are meant to look like they are “floating in space,” but it is always possible to see the wood or metal. We also realized that we needed to choose construction methods that were fast — time was against us.

With these conclusions in mind, Oat Foundry decided to allow our city skyline to make the statement and set it as the backdrop for the TEDxPhiladelphia sign. Also, Erik of Top Banana USA helped us to print out a 21” vinyl “reflection” of that skyline in the water.

TEDxPhiladelphia’s “And Justice for All” is a great step in bridging the moat currently preventing a more egalitarian Philadelphia.