For over four decades, America's SBDC has hosted their Annual Training event, bringing together professionals from across the US states and territories. For the 2025 event, I was the sole designer in charge of the event logo, branding, microsite, and event materials. There were also three programs featured within the event that needed their own unique branding — the State Stars awards, Rising Leadership Certification, and AI U program (an America's SBDC program created with support from Google.org). I designed the logos and brand styles for all three programs.
The theme for 2025 was "The Future of Work" and I designed a bold but simple wordmark for the logo, along with a futuristic brand style. My goal was for the event branding to be compatible with not only the America's SBDC brand, but also their AI U program, which I had designed the brand style for a few years prior. For AI U, I had designed custom backgrounds with abstract gradient waves, so I decided to do something similar with waves for this event, but this time I sourced options with abstract particles to represent a digital future.
The same brand style was applied across all event materials: digital signage, print signage, registration counters, tradeshow booths, mainstage graphics, backdrops, presentations, and more.
Instead of choosing a classic space-age font to represent the "future" theme, I went with a modern blocky font that is a bit wider than the font family from the America's SBDC logo. For the color palette, I chose a neon red and midnight blue in similar hues to the red and blue colors from the America's SBDC palette.
