Creative Event Branding

A new approach and creative vision sets the tone for a trade association's event branding.

“Through Sharper Creative, we’ve been able to bring new creative vision to our conference materials and move toward a professional customization that sets the tone for our conferences. Being able to rely on Sue’s expertise to guide our materials allows me to move toward my deadlines in a timely manner and know that the graphic design piece will come together without hardship.”

Amanda Bell, CMP

Meeting Manager

The Need

The National Alcohol Beverage Control Association (NABCA) wanted a more creative approach to building the event branding for their large annual conference. They needed a partner who could handle a project with many deliverables over the course of several months with edits returned in a timely fashion so their internal team would not be delayed as they moved forward with marketing the event.

The Solution

Sharper Creative recommended an illustrative approach for the creative to brand NABCA’s annual conference theme, which was Take Advantage of Change. To explore the options, Sharper Creative developed several creative directions, from very literal to a more conceptual idea.

After feedback from the client’s conference team, two of the options were explored further, with tightening of the concepts and the addition of color. After a few more iterations, the concept was finalized and vectorized.

The Results

The custom illustrative concept gave NABCA’s annual conference a strong visual brand during the life cycle of the event through planning until deployment. The theme was used consistently on all of the event’s sales, marketing and on-site collateral, which tied the conference together with a cohesive look and feel.

While the predominant color scheme for much of the marketing material was “summer yellow,” other seasonal colors and creative elements were developed to distinguish different sections of the marketing materials, such as a fall color scheme for keynote speakers; a winter scheme for seminars and workshops; and spring scheme for lodging and travel information. These complementary graphics added variety to the collateral, while also tying together the seasonal concept in a creative way.

Onward ...

Sharper Creative continues to develop creative branding directions for NABCA’s various event and meetings. The custom illustrative style continues for the board of directors meeting and the annual conference, while smaller meetings use a photographic approach. No matter the underlying style, it’s important that the entire event campaign has a cohesive visual brand across all media, from app landing pages to on-site signage and everything in between. Below is a list of some of the event collateral produced for NABCA.

Save-the-date notice
Registration materials
Forms
App screens
Confirmation email
Board of directors’ profiles
Badges
Customized floor plans
Water bottle label
Wine and menu cards
Tickets
PowerPoint graphics
Signage (entrance, directional, meter boards)

Project Samples

Click on the gallery images below to see a few completed communications we created for this client.