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 (site archived here), 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.
