DesignXL

The first creative conference for America’s first settlement

About This Project

In early 2019, a dedicated group of professionals from the Pensacola Design community decided to create a conference to bring the industry’s best and brightest thinkers to the Pensacola area. Our main purpose was to serve our creative community with practical knowledge to advance their professional development, build new skillsets, and improve overall work.

This case study is part of a MUCH larger community project, so I’m only going to talk about brand, design, and website assets specifically here, but this was a highly collaborative group effort.

Goals

Establish PensacolaI as an area where creative professionals thrive
Strengthen community engagement and relationships through active conversation, ongoing collaboration, and continuous learning
Prove that creatives can be major contributors for workforce and economic development
Develop world-class educational programs with both locally and nationally-renowned speakers
Attract top talent and retain existing talent because we have elevated our region’s reputation as a place that nurtures and develops the best, quality professionals

Tools + Integrations

Google Docs

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe XD

WordPress

Elementor

Eventbrite

The Brand

Every great logo starts with a simple sketch.

After we decided upon the name “DesignXL”, my brain immediately went into idea land. These were the very first concepts I drew, which got polished further to create the official “XL” logomark.

The Website

Since the conference was brand new, we had no clue what we even wanted or needed on the website. We had no brand yet, no photos, no text, or really much of anything other than the date and location.

I took a look at what some other conferences had on their sites and started to get inspired. From there, we outlined the basic needs: registration, agenda, speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and other basic info.

These mockups were my preliminary design, content, and layout ideas, which ended up being quite close to the final product.