Zebra had a new brand — new visual system, new voice, a clear messaging platform. The work was applying it everywhere the brand guide didn't reach: events at trade show scale, and a recruiting presence that could hold its own in a room full of Google and Honeywell booths.
Zebra Technologies has a presence at major market tradeshows. I designed the booths, executing according to the Zebra brand guide. Each project required a coherent story through a booth that gets walked in from all different directions and needed to keep attention long enough for Zebra representatives to network. In addition to the booth, each event required a social campaign and messaging that tied back to the larger Zebra campaign, Better Every Day.
My team was comprised of a copywriter, another art director, and an account manager.
Art directed and executed the NRF booth design from concept through production. The booth was divided into zones that mirrored the structure of a retail store — each zone's walls doing immediate work, communicating what the demo at that section covers before an attendee had walked ten feet in. Copy direction put the "Better Every Day" campaign forward, paired with lines that nodded to each specific demo with enough personality to hold attention once someone was inside.
The creative extended across the full event footprint: tradeshow signage at main entrance areas, a billboard outside the venue, a branded private meeting room, and car wraps in the surrounding area as moving advertisements.
Art directed the full booth design for MODEX, the premier supply chain and manufacturing trade show in North and South America. The booth experience was structured as a journey through the supply chain — from pallet unloading through to last mile delivery — with each section designed to tell an attendee exactly where they are in that journey and what the demo at that station covers.
Color direction pulled Zebra's impact green from the brand palette as a direct signal to the audience: the same color on-screen reads as a high-vis vest on a warehouse floor. Photography followed the human, helpful, hopeful brief — people in their environments, connecting with coworkers, doing the work — not holding a device at the camera. Messaging implemented the "Better Every Day" campaign line alongside copy with a wink — direct, but with enough personality to stop someone who'd already walked past twelve other booths.
The aesthetic had to communicate capability without performing it.
Art directed the HIMSS booth with the same brand identity tuned for a more conservative audience. Color choices pulled blue and magenta from the Zebra palette — one for calm, one for energy, neither clinical. Photography was moments of connection and help — the interaction between people, not the device in someone's hand. Partnerships were placed upfront in the booth layout.
Messaging followed the "Better Every Day" campaign paired with a larger callout that was descriptive and casual — direct, nothing that reads as business or technology jargon.
The SKO was the first Zebra-hosted event to run in the new brand — unofficially, the prom night of the redesign.
Art directed a full venue takeover at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando: environment graphics, wayfinding, presentations, tabletop signage, giveaways, event app, email, venue LED screens, a video tunnel, and on-site digital. The creative direction was impact green and magenta on black — high contrast, bold statement copy, built with the energy and excitement of new hardware and software launches. A production-ready style guide was documented alongside the creative for replication across sign types and surfaces.
The system was adopted by the EMEA and APAC teams for their regional versions of the same event.
Partnered with a copywriter and Zebra's talent acquisition team to reimagine the recruiting event experience. Together, we developed the "Bring Your Kind of Different" concept and built a modular creative system that combined campaign photography, audience-specific messaging, and adaptable event assets. The toolkit enabled recruiters to tailor the experience to different hiring audiences while maintaining a consistent employer brand across events.