Strategy + Brand Experience

Role: Exhibitor, evaluator, brand experience designer, and author of post-conference audit
Organization: ICF International (large Federal contract)

Attending a conference as a first-time exhibitor is an opportunity most people treat as a to-do list. Show up, staff the booth, hand out materials, go home. I treated it as a design problem worth solving.

I had designed swag and handouts for Information Gateway conferences before, but I had never seen the exhibit in person. Walking up to the booth for the first time, something was immediately clear: everything was blue. The tablecloth, the banners, the swag, the bags — all the same shade, all competing with each other, none of it popping. The brand had accent colors that existed for exactly this purpose and none of them were anywhere in sight.

So while I was there, I took photos of the setup and created mockups showing what the table could look like with the brand's aqua blue and bright yellow introduced as accent colors. The goal wasn't a full redesign — it was showing how small, intentional changes to color distribution could make the whole exhibit feel more cohesive and visually alive.

Beyond the visual observation, I spent four days tracking 113 attendee engagements, documenting conversations and content gaps, monitoring publication distribution across seven titles, and evaluating every touchpoint from the QR landing page experience to swag selection to exhibitor support materials. I also piloted AI tools to test a smarter approach to publication selection, generating audience-matched recommendations based on the conference program, attendee profile, and our publication inventory.

The feedback report I produced covered eight areas: conference audience alignment, exhibitor support materials, booth engagement strategies, QR landing page experience, swag cohesion and recommendations, physical reminder materials, publication selection, and content and collaboration gaps. Each section combined direct observation, attendee feedback, and specific actionable recommendations.

The response was immediate. Colleagues called it "such a great and helpful update" and noted that the structure of the evaluation itself could serve as a framework for a standardized feedback form going forward. The outreach team reached out shortly after to commission new swag designs based directly on the mockups. The new pieces use the aqua blue and bright yellow accent colors, and the response to the designs said everything: "I'm not surprised because everything you've ever designed has always been incredible, but these designs are blowing me away. I am obsessed with what you've done."

That is the work I find most energizing: walking into an experience, seeing it clearly, and coming back with something that makes the next one better.