NRF Supply Chain 360 Conference
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association. In 2022 they launched their first-ever Retail Supply Chain 360 Conference, and I designed the complete brand for it, from the logo through the live event environment. It's the project I'm proudest of: my identity was selected through a competitive internal design review, then rolled out across print, digital, social, and the event floor in Cleveland.
Primary and secondary research
Designed and refined the visual components of the branding and event website
Creating style guides
Low-fidelity wireframes
High-fidelity designs and asset creation
My Roles & Responsibilities
Multiple NRF teams handle Conferences, Membership, Events, and Marketing. I was one of three designers on the Marketing team. The people who directly affected and interacted with my work were:
Sherry Chauldin, Sr. Director, Creative Production
Erica Aquilina, Director, Creative Production
Allison Taylor, Digital Designer
Samantha Murphy, Director, Marketing
Alexa Herman, Manager, Marketing
Sara Lott, Sr. Director, Digital Marketing
Team
The Supply Chain 360 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 held in Cleveland, OH, near the Port of Cleveland.
Goals
The goal of the inaugural event was to finally give our supply-chain partners the standalone event they'd been asking for. We'd hosted smaller supply-chain breakout sessions inside our large NYC conference (20,000+ participants), but after COVID the need to bring supply-chain members together in their own space was vital. The creative brief asked us to embrace the "360" concept and center sustainability.
Challenges
Our marketing director gave the design team complete freedom over the event's direction; our task was to create the logo and branding style. My design challenge was choosing the visual direction and color palette. I built the identity around a literal circle to embody "360," and paired NRF's signature gold with blue and green to signal sustainability.
Before presenting to the larger marketing team, the three designers each created two proofs to critique together. Four designs advanced to the full marketing team, one each from Erica and Allison, plus both of mine.
Erica’s proof
Allison’s proof
Kelli’s proof 1
Kelli’s proof 2
Solution
The design team presented the four proofs to the marketing team, walking through our comps, decisions, and collaboration. In the end, the team chose my logo and my first proof, paired with the color palette from my second proof, and asked us to make the design more dynamic by adding illustrations. Those illustrations became the main images and backgrounds across social media, marketing, and event design.
The final system carried the event end to end, on-stage signage, registration, networking spaces, digital ads, and social, giving an inaugural conference a cohesive, recognizable identity from day one.