Each year for BreakThrough, the lead designer revamps the existing brand with a new look and feel, all while keeping the core elements of the brand (the orange to purple gradient, the triangles, the Jockey One font, etc). Some elements carry over into future years , while others are introduced for only one year.

As the lead designer, it was my role to read this revamp in 2022. For the design, I was inspired by 2022 marking the 50th anniversary of Title IX. WeCoach had created content all year surrounding this landmark case, and it felt right to give a nod to such an important piece of legislation through design. Once I finalized the brand with our internal creative team, I pitched the design to our larger comms team, and then to WeCoach for final approval.

View the full website at breakthroughsummit.live

As a thank you gift to each speaker, we put together a thank you box full of gifts from Hudl, WeCoach, and event sponsors to send them after the event. For the second year in a row, we collaborated with Wax Buffalo, a woman-owned, Lincoln Nebraska-based candle company to make a custom BreakThrough branded candle.

I created the side vinyl and top sticker design, and worked with Wax Buffalo’s designer Tessa Bischoff for printing and final design tweaks.

For the 2022 Summit, we held our event in person as a part of the AVCA conference (American Volleyball Coaches Association) — the conference took place in downtown Omaha Nebraska at the CHI Health Center, with some meetings taking place alongside BreakThrough Summit in the attached Hilton hotel. Part of our marketing strategy to get attendees to visit Breakthrough was putting event brand representation within other parts of the conference, such as a large BreakThrough-branded Hudl logo in our Hudl booth, and banners in the exhibit hall.

To help direct people throughout the hotel for the event, we made floor decals and directional signage leading from the hotel entrances to the ballroom. We utilized the brightest brand colors and the unique brand triangles to stick out against the hotel’s blue color scheme and the primarily white and copy heavy signage for the AVCA events.

One of my biggest responsibilities as lead designer on BreakThrough is planning the stage design for the event. In collaboration with the event team and other stakeholders at Hudl, I helped pick out furniture, utilized existing assets to keep our costs low, planned out various layouts and set changes depending on the amount of speakers, among other responsibilities.

Another important part of my role is creating all design assets used during the production. Our team uses the ReStream livestreaming software to broadcast the event through Bizzabo, our event platform. It’s vital to create graphics that you not only typically see during a live production (logo bugs, lower thirds, sponsor graphics, etc) but also graphics that indicate to virtual viewers what session they’re watching, and when to move around within Bizzabo to get to the next session. We also prioritized having the stream up on a projector for in-person viewers (see left) to watch ad breaks and for those who weren’t seated with easy viewing access of the stage.