Event branding and assets for the company all-hands retreat. Since it’s our annual internal event, we were able to take creative liberties with the branding. We were given the prompt “Mediavine Live.”
As I met with the stakeholders for the first time, we discussed and brainstormed what “Mediavine Live” means to everyone. We are a 100% remote company, so it could mean we’re all together in person (live) for the first time in a year. It could be pretty literal, we’re in Nashville were there’s tons of live music. It could also mean livestreaming which is also always an element of the event. We livestream to those who aren’t able to join us each year. They requested branding that keeps all three of those interpretations in mind.
The design team researched and compiled a few slides for stakeholders to review. We presented two directions that we could take the “Mediavine Live” prompt. One was heavily focused on neon and the other direction was more playful and colorful. We went with the neon direction because we wanted to play into the fact that our event was going to be in Nashville this year. This neon style also mirrors previous one-off designs we’ve made to promote our “on-air” podcast.
The stakeholders loved the horizontal Mediavine Live logo mockup that Charlotte Cheshire, fellow Marketing Graphic Designer, came up with. I took her logo mockup and took it to its final form, making sure to add the date and location as well as a pop of color so it’s consistent with previous year’s event logos.
In the past, we’ve found creating a bunch of assets and versatile icons ahead of time helps us be more efficient in the future so I created a few icon compositions that were meant to be reused throughout the materials. This became very helpful later on since we had a short turnaround on a lot of different pieces of signage.
Besides the generic music city icons, I also created icons specific to each activity we were offering as a company. These included a whiskey tasting, bus tour, adventure park, and more.
I’ve been in charge of event branding for the company-wide retreat in the past, but this time I was officially given the design project lead role in this event. We were given a huge list of signage (55 lines in a spreadsheet!) and other collateral that needed to be turned around in a few short weeks. One of these weeks including Memorial day as well as a few days of PTO I had scheduled. That means, if we wanted the project to be a great visual experience for our coworkers, we had to work fast! This led to a production calendar needing to be made. We had a list of everything that needed to be done and dates that they needed to be done by.
Since my team and I are visual people and I wanted to set us up for success while I was out of office, I created a visual production calendar as well to include any additional details for each piece of collateral. This included pictures of what the final products may look like.
Using the elements that were developed ahead of time, I was able to put together signage and swag for this even fairly quickly as details for each item were sent my way. This is my favorite part of this project every year. Seeing my digital files become real, tangible items! I loved seeing people interact with them and we got so many comments on our branding from coworkers and even strangers at the hotel!
It’s a pleasure to work on this project year after year. It is so surreal to see a project of this scale come to life!
Of course, so many people came together to put this event together. We worked with incredible event coordinators, our People Operations team did so much of the planning. My immediate team members were so supportive and picked up where I left off while I was out of office in the middle of this project. I am so lucky to have been given the freedom to execute this vision and have a part from start to finish.
(btw, I won the bowling game)
