Design: Food, Wine & Brew Celebration

On literally my first day of work at the San Diego Zoo, I kicked off the redesign for the Food, Wine, and Brew Celebration, the zoo’s second-largest fundraising event of the year (no pressure). It was a pretty massive undertaking with tons of moving parts. There were postcards, check presenters, billboards, emails, a web landing page, paid search ads, social media promos, lanyards, event maps, on-grounds signage and so much more.

The objective was to update the event branding to give it a more current look and feel. It had to be eye-catching and fun and have elements that could be applied across various collateral, from 250-pixel web banners to highway billboards.

I think this project probably would have made it into my portfolio if it weren’t for the fact that it only had a shelf life of one year in my original design. In its second year, it was slightly altered by another illustrator with the panda removed and replaced with a koala.

This project was a beast and I literally designed every piece of collateral from start to finish, I even volunteered the night of the event to shoot photos (which was a fun experiment in low-light photography for me). I think the amount of work it ended up being made it all the more exciting when all of the pieces came to life.

It was exciting and almost surreal to see my work on grounds at the World-Famous San Diego Zoo for the first time. I even have a picture of my niece and I standing in front of the exit sign above because my parents came to visit and they were so proud to see it.

Do you have a moment in your career that you feel really proud of? I’d love to hear about it!