Case Study: TIBCO NOW 2021 Conference Branding

I was the lead designer for the branding of TIBCO’s 2021 user conference, TIBCO NOW. This was a virtual event. I was responsible for the overall visual language and style guide, as well as digital assets.

Stakeholders: I collaborated with the design team, and partnered with the events team, third-party vendors, the web team, and the content team.

Challenge: The theme of 2021’s event was Limitless. The conference was a digital experience, treated as four conferences in one—a free, core event with three premium, paid sub-tracks each treated as their own mini-conference. So there was a unique challenge to find a way to brand the overall conference and three tracks in one cohesive design.

Solution: The three tracks covered the core solutions offered in TIBCO’s Connected Intelligence platform: Connect, Unify, and Predict. Each of these solutions were already defined by their own color in the Connected Intelligence loop. So I started exploring ways of visually representing the limitless concept incorporating that color palette.

I felt the best way to visually convey the idea of limitless was through a receding effect. After my initial round of concepts I decided to focus on a stylized version of the NOW logo. I also found that I would need more than just color to differentiate the tracks.

I explored various designs but ultimately, my solution was to represent each of the tracks not only by color, but also incorporate the use of shapes.

These colors and shapes are represented in the final TIBCO NOW 2021 logo with elements of the shapes reflected around each letter. This solution unlocked the potential to create various textural elements.

Final TIBCO NOW 2021 logo

Using the assigned color and shape for each track, I established patterns that allowed for flexibility when designing different assets. Keeping in mind that we still needed a way to differentiate the core conference, I used a gradient from the blue, green, and orange colors which would only be used for general branding purposes.

I set the overall style for the event and was responsible for the following:

sponsorship guide
social media graphics
email graphics
virtual zoom backgrounds
collaborated on the design of the conference website

Digital sponsorship guide

This guide was used as a tool to sell sponsorships.

Designed in Adobe InDesign with illustrative elements created in Adobe Illustrator.

Social and email graphics

Social graphics designed in Adobe Illustrator and email template created in Adobe XD.

Conference materials

As this was a virtual conference, the usual printed conference materials were not needed. I designed event-branded zoom backgrounds, for the core conference as well as the three separate tracks, for presenters and attendees to use.