Sample Cisco Live Brand Guidelines
The Cisco Live brand guidelines change every year for the upcoming events that span from June to February of the following year. For each new branded look, I closely adhered to the guidelines to create high-quality campaigns and assets while maintaining brand consistency.
2023/2024 Brand Guidelines
2024/2025 Brand Guidelines
Speed vs Security speaking session stage backgrounds and signage
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 cybersecurity space. The two graphics below are promotional digital signage displayed throughout the Cisco Live event to promote the speaking session and increase event engagement.
Contribution:
I designed these assets using Adobe Illustrator and Figma, collaborating cross-team with stakeholders from the event marketing team and the copywriter. I set up these graphics as templates that were also used on the Cisco DevNet social channels to promote the event.
Design rationale:
Adhering closely to the 2023/20224 brand guidelines, I composed these graphics to be visually engaging and to feature a clean, hierarchical typographical layout that guides the user's eye throughout the composition. I wanted to capture the vibrancy of the event. To do this, I used illustrative visual elements to create a composition that grabs attention and highlights the information both visually and with messaging.
Achievement:
These assets helped engage 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.
Speaking sessions promotional digital signage
Scope:
These digital signs were crafted for various large screens and displayed throughout the event and at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live 2024 in Las Vegas. This is a small selection from many signs I created for this particular Cisco Live event. This selection promoted individual speaking sessions, partner-led sessions, and prize giveaways at the DevNet Zone.
Contribution:
Collaborating with event marketing stakeholders and copywriters, I designed digital displays using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, then assembled them in Figma as reusable assets. As part of the content marketing team, I worked with the Events team to brainstorm ideas and marketing strategies to draw more visitors to the DevNet Zone, including suggesting giveaways and promoting prizes.
Design rationale:
Following the 2024-2025 Cisco Live brand guidelines, I designed layouts that are modern and clean, adhering to the core typography style and overall aesthetic. I incorporated bold, engaging graphics, utilizing scale and cropping to emphasize certain assets. Additionally, I used angles and scale to add tension and create a more dynamic and interesting composition.
Achievement:
These digital signs enhanced Cisco DevNet's visibility at the event, leading to higher attendance and greater engagement in workshops, speaking sessions, giveaways, and learning labs.
Cisco Live Speaker Promo Social Ad Campaigns
Scope:
The social ads shown here represent various Cisco Live Events. The ads at the top were created for the 2023 Las Vegas event. I used the 2023/2024 brand guidelines to highlight speaking sessions with prominent figures in the tech and cybersecurity industries and to promote them on social media. The bottom two social ads were designed using the newer 2024/2025 brand guidelines. All of these were part of a social media campaign to increase attendance and engagement with the speaking sessions and Cisco tools.
Contribution:
Collaborating with the social marketing team and the Cisco DevNet event marketing team, I created these social posts using Photoshop for photo illustration, design, portrait silhouetting, and color correction, and Figma for the overall layout. These were part of a growing design system for each event.
Design rationale:
Utilizing systems thinking, I developed a clean, modern design aligned with brand guidelines for specific events. Each composition used a simple, bold color palette and a multi-column grid to maintain element alignment. I also applied cropping and scaling to craft an engaging, dynamic layout, complemented by clear, brand-centric typography to improve clarity and readability.
Achievement:
These social posts helped drive Cisco DevNet community engagement at the events and raised event and brand awareness on social media platforms like X and Instagram/Facebook.
Email newsletters
Scope:
This is a small 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-functionally with the event marketing team, based on the brand guidelines, I developed a specific Cisco DevNet art direction and served as brand steward, collaborating cross-functionally with other teams to ensure brand consistency.
Design rationale:
Incorporating systems thinking and using the Cisco Live branding guidelines, I designed these newsletter headers to maintain a consistent visual style across the Cisco DevNet design system and align with other design assets and components, promoting the same Cisco Live events.
Achievement:
These email newsletter headers visually communicated the intended marketing message in a branded way, improving engagement and attendance at the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live events.
YouTube livestream thumbnail templates
Scope:
I designed these YouTube thumbnail templates to support the Cisco DevNet DA and Software Engineer team's streaming efforts. These templates were used by the Cisco DevNet team to showcase recorded speaker sessions from Cisco Live as well as live and recorded streams about Cisco tools and technologies.
Contribution:
I collaborated with Software Engineers and DA teams to design these as templates using Figma. The thumbnails were a part of a large Cisco DevNet design system.
Design rationale:
Using the Cisco Live 2023-2024 brand style, I created these templates with cropping, scale, and interesting angles to craft an engaging, dynamic composition that provides ample space for text and a speaker's portrait when needed. Utilizing systems thinking, these assets needed to bridge the gap between team needs and brand guidelines.
Achievement:
These thumbnail templates enabled the Cisco DevNet team to create and upload numerous Cisco Live streams and speaking sessions to YouTube. This increased engagement from customers and the community, highlighting emerging trends in software engineering, security, observability, and other topics covered at Cisco Live.
Speed vs Security speaking session thumbnail
Scope:
As a part of a multi-touch campaign, this thumbnail promoted a recorded stream of the Speed vs. Security live speaking session from the 2023 Cisco Live Las Vegas event.
Contribution:
I collaborated cross-functionally with the events marketing team. I designed this thumbnail using Adobe Photoshop for photo illustration and Figma for the final layout and composition.
Design rationale:
Throughout every Cisco Live asset I worked on, I wanted to ensure consistency across assets to help communicate quickly and efficiently. This asset was part of a Cisco Live design system I created for Cisco DevNet.
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's post-event efforts to promote the speaking session's cybersecurity topic.
Book giveaway print poster
Scope:
This poster promoted a speaking session, a book giveaway, and a signing by Author and Researcher, Speaker, and Director Gene Kim. The poster was part of a multi-touch promotional campaign for the speaking session, Speed vs Security, encouraging attendees to visit the DevNet Zone at Cisco Live.
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:
As part of a multi-touch campaign, I created a series of blog graphics that connect Cisco Live with Cisco DevNet initiatives to educate attendees about Cisco tools. I developed a scalable design system for blog posts, focusing on the branding and upbreat messaging.
Contribution:
I designed the banner as a scalable Figma template. I centered the composition to align with the CMS template restrictions and to accommodate a crop area for other instances. I collaborated with the copywriter to ensure the imagery matched the blog content.
Design rationale:
Authentic imagery is a big part of the Cisco brand. I selected meaningful, authentic photographs from past events to showcase our community and capture a true sense of Cisco Live. Crafting a vibrant, energetic, and optimistic composition, utilizing brand guidelines. These visuals are designed to bridge the content of each blog article and to help evoke a positive, inspiring attitude toward Cisco tools and solutions.
Achievement:
As a part of a multi-touch Cisco DevNet campaign, the blog graphics helped communicate the Cisco Live brand and motivated attendees to register for demos, learning labs, and speaker sessions in the DevNet Zone to explore Cisco tools.
Registration one-pager - print
Scope:
The registration one-pager was a print material handed out at the DevNet Zone during Cisco Live in Las Vegas, 2023. It included a barcode that attendees could scan to sign up for the Speed vs. Security live stream or attend in person. To encourage in-person attendance, we distributed Gene Kim's The Unicorn Project to the first 50 participants.
Contribution:
Collaborating closely with the events marketing team and the copywriter, I designed the layout for this one-pager in Adobe InDesign and used Photoshop for image editing. I implemented a grid system to organize the overall design and layout, and created a template with Master Pages, Paragraph, and Character styles for similar one-pager materials.
Design rationale:
To create this one-pager, I followed the Cisco Live 2023-2024 brand guidelines to design a simple layout that presents all vital information in a clear hierarchy. The aim was to boost in-person attendance. I made the in-person registration section more visual by adding an image of the book, a larger QR code graphic, and a bigger "register now' call to action. The layout and photography were set in CMYK, 300ppi, with a .125" bleed on the top and sides.
Achievement:
Boosted registration rates and attendance at the in-person speaking session while enabling those unable to attend in person to join online through the livestream on the Cisco DevNet YouTube channel.