The archive · Product Ideas · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
OpenAI DevDay 2025: a conference identity built from code, brackets and ASCII
Studio Dumbar turned OpenAI's developer conference into a code-native identity — brackets, ASCII art and arcade games built from OpenAI Sans.
OpenAI
What it had to solve
OpenAI's DevDay invites developers from around the world to preview new products, and the 2025 edition was its largest yet. OpenAI's message was that it's the best time in history to be a builder, so the identity had to celebrate software engineering and speak to developers in their own visual language.
How it works
OpenAI DevDay, the company's annual developer conference, is where OpenAI shows builders what it has been working on. For the 2025 edition — its largest to date — the brief was driven by a simple truth: it's the best time in history to be a builder. The identity therefore had to celebrate software engineering itself and communicate with attendees in a language they use every day, not in the usual conference clichés of gradients and abstract swirls.
Studio Dumbar/DEPT, working with OpenAI's Design Studio, built the entire identity from OpenAI's brand typeface, OpenAI Sans. The design system took visual cues from code — indentation, function formatting, dark and light modes, colour themes and glyphs — and turned programming primitives into a scalable visual language: square brackets framing the stage, ASCII-art-inspired zoomorphic characters in static, motion and 3D, and a family of type-driven arcade experiences where attendees could play games, call characters from branded phone booths and win plushies from claw machines.
The system flexed from refined typographic compositions to arcade-scale play, covering stage, motion, sound, environmental graphics and digital touchpoints. It was then extended to DevDay Exchange, the event's global edition across Brazil, India, London, Japan and Korea, and the arcade games became a popular permanent feature at OpenAI HQ. The work won a D&AD Yellow Pencil and a Wood Pencil in 2026, and DEPT was named Europe's number-one design agency that year.
Why it lands
- It inverted the usual conference-design move: instead of decorating the event, it used code's own building blocks as the visual system.
- The identity was generated from OpenAI Sans alone, giving a huge, multi-touchpoint event a coherent system with almost no new assets.
- Turning the system into arcade games made the identity interactive — attendees didn't just look at it, they played inside it.
- It framed engineering as craft worth celebrating, which matched OpenAI's 'best time to be a builder' message exactly.
What it did
The identity ran across the keynote, event signage, merch and the global DevDay Exchange events in Brazil, India, London, Japan and Korea; the arcade games became a fixture at OpenAI HQ. The work won a D&AD Yellow Pencil and a Wood Pencil in 2026.
What you can take
An event identity doesn't have to decorate a profession — it can be built from the profession's own raw materials, so every attendee instantly sees their world reflected in the design.
Since then
The code-native system proved scalable beyond the San Francisco event: it carried the DevDay Exchange global editions in Brazil, India, London, Japan and Korea, and OpenAI kept the arcade games as a permanent feature at its headquarters. Studio Dumbar/DEPT, which had an ongoing collaboration with OpenAI's design team, went on to be named Europe's number-one design agency, and the DevDay identity was intended as the foundation for the conference's branding in years to come. The work was recognized at D&AD 2026 with both a Yellow Pencil and a Wood Pencil.
Sources
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