Netrush Summit

BRANDING / EVENT DESIGN

2019

Team:

Steve Klinetobe, Creative Direction

Hannah Amundson, Design

Background

Every year, Netrush hosts a Summit for brand partners and industry leaders to come together as a way to celebrate their partnership, learn from each other, and look ahead to recognize trends and what’s to come in the next year. Over 100 people were in attendance, which included Netrush leadership and premium brands leaders from a variety of categories, such as Host Defense, ENO, Pendleton, Ruffwear, and more.

Challenge

A big challenge was branding an event that includes brands from multiple categories. There were four main categories; sports and outdoor, consumer packaged goods, vitamins, minerals, and supplements, and pet care. The theme of this year’s Summit was “unification”, so my challenge was to brand an event that encompasses all of the categories and brings them together as a whole. My direction was to also create something that wasn’t a huge departure from the Netrush brand.

Another huge challenge was creating multiple branded items within budget and having them ready before Summit. I was hired at the end of July, which only gave me a little over two months to brand the event, as well as design all pieces of collateral.

Solution

Through exploration, I created amorphous shapes meant to capture the four main categories of brands coming to Summit. Initially I wanted them to be different colors (sports and outdoor = blue, pet care = yellow, etc) based off of Netrush’s extended color palette, and the treatment of the logo could change based on the category. However, given the years theme, the solution needed to feel more together and it felt too separated. I created an artboard with 3D-rendered shapes with a background gradient of four main colors meant to express the different categories. For each piece of collateral, I cut this graphic apart to create multiple versions of banners, notebooks, and ID badges.

Final Thoughts

Overall the branding was a success — initially we planned on creating a new theme every year but for the last few years this branding has stood the test of time and we’ve stuck with this treatment. The next year, 2020, was a virtual summit due to the pandemic and we decided to keep this branding since “unification” was still strong and present into the new year.