NRF Supply Chain 360 Conference
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. They work with the federal government on retailers' behalf, specifically their large membership community. During my time with the company, I helped work on many national events under their umbrella. The first event I developed the entire branding for was the 2022 Retail Supply Chain 360 Conference.
Team
Many people helped contribute to this event. At NRF, multiple teams handle Conferences, Membership, Events, and Marketing. I was one of the three designers in the Marketing teams, and those people who directly affected and interacted with my work were:
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Sherry Chauldin - Sr. Director, Creative Production
Erica Aquilla - Director, Creative Production
Allison Taylor - Digital Designer
Samantha Murphy - Director, Marketing
Alexa Herman - Manager, Marketing
Sara Lott - Sr. Director, Digital Marketing
My Roles & Responsibilities
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Primary and secondary research
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Designed the initial and refined visual components of the website and branding
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Creating style guides
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Low-fidelity wireframes
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High-fidelity designs and asset creation
The Supply Chain Conference brings together top leaders in retail supply chain and sustainability, industry experts, and leading technology innovators to share ideas and advance the future of the supply chain. The first-ever event was in Cleveland, OH, near the Port of Cleveland.
Goals
The goal of the first inaugural event was to finally have an event that our Supply Chain partners were asking for. We had smaller breakout sessions at our large conference with 20,000+ participants in NYC for supply chain professions. Still, after CoVid, the need to hear from, communicate with, and bring together our supply chain members was vital. In the initial creative brief for the event, we wanted to embrace the 360 feelings and discuss sustainability as a whole.
Challenges
Our marketing director gave us (the design team and I) complete freedom on where to take the event. Our task was to create a logo and the branding style for the event. The design challenge for me was deciding what direction to go visually with the design elements and the colors of the events. I decided to go with a literal circle in my logo design and the event branding. With the colors, I used our NRF gold and added blue and green colors to represent the sustainability aspect.
Before presenting to the larger design team the three designers created two proofs each to share with each other and offer critique. After that review, the following 4 designs were chosen to review with the full marketing team. One design each from Erica and Allison and my two designs moved forward with the next step.
Erica's Proof
Allison's Proof
Kelli's Proof 1
Kelli's Proof 2
Solution
With the four main design proofs, the design team presented them to the rest of the marketing team and discussed our design comps, decisions, and collaborations. In the end, the team chose my logo and my first proof, but they wanted to use the colors of my second proof instead. They also asked that we make the design more dynamic by introducing illustrations. We used these illustrations as main images and backgrounds throughout social media, marketing, and other design elements of the event.
