I was privileged to support the Cisco DevNet team by creating various design assets for many Cisco Live events. I collaborated cross-team, provided art direction, and designed various cross-channel assets, including social media, digital signage, print posters, and one-pagers, as well as speaker session backgrounds and promotional materials such as social posts, print one-pagers, posters, and email newsletter header banners.
Cisco DevNet at Cisco Live (2023-2024)
Cisco Live Branding
Cisco Live is a global event that takes place in three locations throughout the year: Las Vegas, Nevada, in early June; Melbourne, Australia, in early November; and Amsterdam, Netherlands, in early February. The brand is refreshed once a year. Each event style is stretched and overlapped from year to year. A new brand style would kick off with the Las Vagas event and finish in Amsterdam the following year.
2023-2024 branding style
2024-2025 Branding style
Digital speaker backdrop and signage design
Scope:
The top digital background was used during a live speaking session hosted by Cisco DevNet, which featured key industry influencers (Gene Kim, Kelsey Hightower, Stephen Augustus, and Michael Chenetz) in the cyber security space.
Contribution:
I designed these assets using Adobe XD and Illustrator, collaborating cross-team with stakeholders from the event marketing team and the copywriter.
Design rationale:
Adhering closely to the 2023-2024 brand style and branding assets, I composed these to be visually engaging and have a clean typographical treatment. I used the core brand typography style guide and maintained the headers with an ultra-thin font and a bolder typeface for the sub-header.
Achievement:
These digital signs and backgrounds engaged the attendees. They promoted the speaking session and book giveaway, helping drive more attendance to the Speed vs. Security speaking session and engagement with the Gene Kim book signing giveaway.
Digital signage
Scope:
These digital signs were displayed on various large screens at the DevNet Zone at the 2024 Cisco Live, Las Vegas event. This is a curated selection of many different digital signs to promote speaking sessions, community engagement, workshops, and giveaways.
Contribution:
Collaborating cross-team with the event marketing stakeholders, I designed these backgrounds in Adobe Illustrator and used Photoshop for silhouetting and color-correcting photography.
Design rationale:
Using the 2024-2025 Cisco Live brand style guide and assets, I designed these per the brand/brand guide. Following the core brand typography style and overall look and feel, I made the layouts modern and clean with powerful, engaging graphics. I used scale and cropping to make some assets huge and angles to give more tension and an interesting composition.
Achievement:
These digital signs promoted key speaking sessions, workshops, community engagement, and giveaways at the DevNet Zone. They helped engage with our community and communicate various events quickly and cleanly, ultimately improving the event experience and engagement for our community members and customers.
Cisco Live Speaker Promo Social Post
Scope:
Cisco Live is a global event that occurs annually. The event primarily focuses on topics such as AI and technical education. These social posts promoted speaking sessions and engaged our community to visit us at the DevNet Zone.
Contribution:
Collaborating with the social marketing team and the Cisco DevNet event marketing team, I created these social posts using Adobe XD for the overall layout and Photoshop for photo illustration, design, portrait silhouetting, and color correction.
Design rationale:
Utilizing the yearly Cisco Live brand style. I created these social posts promoting speaking and educational sessions at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live Amsterdam and Las Vegas events. I used a clean, modern design style, following the brand guide. In addition, I used cropping and large scale for the brand elements to create an exciting composition that's engaging and clean typography to be more informative.
Achievement:
These social posts helped drive Cisco DevNet community engagement at the events and raised brand awareness.
Newsletter emails
Scope:
This is a curated selection of email newsletter headers created for multiple Cisco Live events, promoting registration, attendance, and speaking sessions.
Contribution:
Collaborating with the content marketing team copywriter and cross-team with the event marketing team, I used Adobe Photoshop to create photo illustrations and Adobe XD for the final layout.
Design rationale:
Using the Cisco Live branding elements and guidelines, I designed these newsletter headers to maintain a consistent visual style throughout the design system for other design assets promoting the same speaking sessions and other DevNet Zone events.
Achievement:
These email newsletter headers helped improve engagement and attendance at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live events.
YouTube livestream thumbnail templates
Scope:
I designed these YouTube thumbnails, supporting the Cisco DevNet DA and Software Engineer team's streaming efforts. These templates were used by the Cisco DevNet team to populate their speaker portrait and session name. I provided art direction to the team to help them make each look on-brand and consistent.
Contribution:
I designed these using Adobe Photoshop and provided art direction when passing off the final assets to the DevNet team to use and populate with a title and portrait.
Design rationale:
Utilizing the Cisco Live 2023-2024 brand style, I designed these templates using cropping and various angles to create a compelling composition that leaves enough room for text and a portrait of the speaker to be populated as needed. For art direction, I provided a specific font weight and size for the team to use for headers and sub-headers. In addition, I offered art direction for portraits and how they should appear.
Achievement:
These thumbnail templates helped the Cisco DevNet team produce and upload many Cisco Live streams and speaking sessions to YouTube. Increasing customer and community engagement revealed trends in a variety of topics regarding software engineering, security, observability, and many other topics discussed at Cisco Live.
Speed vs Security thumbnail
Scope:
This thumbnail promoted a recorded stream of the Speed vs. Security live speaking session from the 2023 Cisco Live Las Vegas event.
Contribution:
Collaborating cross-team with the events marketing team. I designed this thumbnail using Adobe Photoshop for photo illustration and Adobe XD for the final layout and composition.
Design rationale:
Throughout every Cisco Live asset I worked on, I wanted to ensure consistency from asset to asset to help communicate quickly and efficiently. This helps maintain a recognizable visual language and instills trust and, more importantly, brand trust.
Achievement:
This thumbnail helped promote the Speed vs. Security speaking session on YouTube. It helped maintain consistency between the Cisco Live event and the Cisco DevNet team efforts to promote the speaking session post-event.
Book giveaway print poster
Scope:
This poster's marketing purpose was to bolster registration rates for the Security vs. Speed speaking session, giving attendees a chance to experience a one-of-a-kind speaking session while meeting Gene Kim and getting a signed copy of his influential book, The Uncior Project.
Contribution:
I designed this poster using Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop to illustrate the photos of the speakers. I converted the RGB background asset file to CMYK and designed the overall layout in the CMYK color space in InDesign. I also included a .125" bleed with crop marks for print production. I ensured all images were 300ppi (pixels per inch) and in CMYK. This poster was placed at the front desk, similar to a POS (point of sale) poster.
Design rationale:
I used the minimalistic side of the Cisco Live 2023-2024 branding to create a simple yet impactful layout using monochrome brand elements. In addition, I used large scale and cropping to create a wave effect, which allowed enough white space for a clean typographic layout and essential information, such as emphasizing informational and visual hierarchies, including the book, the QR code, and portraits of the speakers.
Achievement:
This poster helped bolster the registration to the speaking event and increased engagement with the Cisco DevNet brand by bringing in more people to the DevNet Zone.
Blog graphics
Scope:
To engage in our community more, we ran an extensive article campaign on our blog promoting Cisco DevNet at Cisco Live. These banners appeared in the top left corner of the blog and helped brand the event-specific content.
Contribution:
I designed these banners using Adobe XD. The image's composition had to be center-focused due to the CMS template we used on our blog.
Design rationale:
Selecting meaningful imagery, I chose to use images from past events to communicate to our community what they can expect when they attend. In addition, I used the 2023-2024 brand guide and elements to create an energetic, bright, and positive move mood, coupled with positive and uplifting authentic imagery; these graphics aimed to instill the uplifting feeling one feels when one attends a Cisco Live event.
Achievement:
The blog graphics above are only a few of the total featured on our blog. This campaign aimed to bring insight and knowledge about Cisco DevNet and what one can expect at Cisco Live and the DevNet Zone (a designated area at the Cisco Live event).
Registration print one-pager
Scope:
The registration one-pager was a print asset handed out at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live, Las Vegas, 2023. It featured a barcode an attendee would scan to register for the Speed vs. Security live stream or an in-person option. To incentivize in-person attendance, we gave away Gene Kim's The Unicorn Project to the first 50 attendees.
Contribution:
Collaborating with the events marketing team and copywriter, I designed this one-pager in Adobe InDesign for the layout and Photoshop for image manipulation.
Design rationale:
To create this one-pager, I used the Cisco Live 2023-2024 style and elements to create a simple layout that featured all vital information. To improve in-person attendance, I made the in-person registration call to action more visual by including an image of the book, a larger QR code graphic, and a larger "register now" text call to action. The photos were set in CMYK, 300ppi, and .125" bleed at the top sides.
Achievement:
Bolstered registration rates and attendance at the in-person speaking session and allowed those who couldn't make it in person to join online for the livestream on our YouTube channel.