Name the bigger idea.
Define StartUP PGH as a region-wide expression of entrepreneurship, research, investment, creativity, and frontier technology—not another standalone conference.
All client stories
Client story / StartUP PGH
One region.Fifteen partners.A story built to move.
BSG helped turn a powerful but distributed innovation ecosystem into a shared brand, public platform, and communications system that organizations across Pittsburgh could use together.
Forging the Future
September 14–18, 2026
ClientStartUP PGH
Built forDozens of regional partner organizations
EngagementBrand and platform launch
Created by BSGStrategy, identity, website, and communications
01 / The opportunity
The ecosystem already had energy.It needed a shared signal.
Pittsburgh’s founders, researchers, investors, universities, companies, and community organizations were already creating consequential work. The challenge was not inventing that momentum. It was giving many independent partners one clear way to make it visible—without erasing what made each contribution distinct.
02 / The build
We designed a system partners could recognize as theirs—and audiences could understand as one.
Give momentum a visual language.
Create an electric identity and verbal system rooted in making, connection, and Pittsburgh’s habit of building what comes next.
Make complexity navigable.
Build a responsive website that gives attendees, event hosts, sponsors, and partners a common destination and clear next actions.
Help many voices move together.
Develop brand standards, presentation and social templates, a partner toolkit, event collateral, email foundations, and communications strategy so dozens of organizations could use the system consistently.
Identity / Built for collective ownership
03 / The idea beneath the identity
The future is not found.It is forged together.
The identity turns “forging” into a forward-looking metaphor for ideas, companies, partnerships, and culture. Purple carries imagination. Blue carries energy and connection. The upward movement signals collective momentum without defaulting to familiar startup clichés.
ElectricBoldCollaborativeCreativeFuture-focused
04 / The public platform
A shared digital home made a distributed week feel connected.
The site established the initiative’s credibility, held a growing calendar of partner programming, supported event submissions, and gave the region a URL it could share. The platform was designed to expand as programming, participation, and communications matured.
- Positioning and message architecture
- Responsive website strategy and design
- Event discovery and submission pathways
- Partner visibility and communications tools
The scale of the launch
Five days.Fifteen regional partners.One clearer invitation.
StartUP PGH brings flagship events and new programming into one region-wide week—making Pittsburgh’s strength in AI, robotics, life sciences, research, entrepreneurship, and investment more visible inside and outside the region.
“StartUP PGH is what happens when academic, state, innovation and nonprofits decide to point all of that energy…”Meredith Meyer Grelli, Carnegie Mellon University
05 / A story still in motion
This is a launch story, not a victory lap.
The inaugural week happens September 14–18, 2026. What BSG has built so far is the foundation: a shared position, a recognizable identity, a public platform, and a communications system. The meaningful outcome will be what regional partners and participants make possible with it.
Continue exploring the work
Different communities. The same belief that listening should lead somewhere.
Need many people to move in one direction?