SmartBugapalooza

Smartbug Media is a fully-remote digital marketing agency. As such, the company brings the whole staff together once a year to promote valuable in-person time between co-workers. In 2024, I was asked to design materials with visuals that support the theme of “everyday superpowers” and the location of Vancouver, Canada.

The short lifespan of conference branding allows designs to be a bit more… exciting, so we found inspiration in comic books, specifically comic book cover layouts. The shirt design was the jumping-off point for the event’s identity, closely mimicking the layouts found in graphic novel cover art.

From there, the visuals blossomed into all the other applications. Because this was a project on a tight timeline, only a few elements were established at the outset—most of the imagery was built on an as-needed basis. Examples include action lines for the presentation deck backgrounds, callouts and boxes for the name badges, self-contained lockups for the stickers, and more.