MozCon 2023

Overview

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MozCon is an annual conference in Seattle which Moz puts on for the SEO industry. SEO experts and digital marketers hold the event in high esteem as some of the best thought leadership in the industry. It engenders extraordinary good will for the Moz brand and a sense of camaraderie for the community. Each year comes with a different theme for the design. For 2023, it was the Future of SEO.

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I needed to concept, coordinate, direct, and produce the following.

• Design the theme and identity for the event
• Direct and produce assets for social media, paid advertising, emails, and promotion across many channels
• Animate and/or direct promotional videos for the event
• Supervise a refresh of the MozCon website
• Design the environment for the conference, including wall clings, booths, signage, and stage design

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Theme Development

I started with the idea of retrofuturism travel posters and artwork that evoked the essence of the Seattle World's fair (which spotlighted the iconic Space Needle). Deep greens, dusty reds, space purple, with yellow highlights prevailed in a lot of this kind of imagery, and I wanted to tell a story in progressing through the environment. The journey would take visitors from the collective and communal futuristic metropolis of the entry spaces through the deep space exploration of the stage, where big deep ideas were presented. With the explosion of AI through 2023, it was a great opportunity to experiment with, and incorporate the tools and aesthetics into the design.

Website Development

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At the same time as the theme was being developed, we also undertook a refresh of the website design to modernize it. We purposely did not want to heavily theme the website as it was to be an evergreen design that should be able to work with any year's theme. However, some of the theme branding still made it into the design, and the result was a big improvement on the past pages.

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Video Ads

Video ads were produced

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Initial video: designed, animated, and produced by myself

2nd video: art direction by myself, motion graphics and production by Elda Flores Montelongo

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Short video for social sharing and mobile viewing

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Primary Promotion

Near the beginning of the year, the promotional campaign began in earnest. In waves of promotion, my team and I developed ads and social images for each promotional stage, from early bird tickets through main promotion, to the "Night Owl" discount (just before the conference beginning). Branded graphics for speakers, sponsors, and parallel promotions were also produced.

Designing the Conference Environment

With promotions all set up, one of the big tasks around each MozCon is creating all the signage, booth graphics, swag, collateral, stage design, and all the other environmental graphics that go into making MozCon a complete experience. Extending the brand created for MozCon 2023, I was able to once again utilize generative AI to create efficiencies and give a boost to many of the items created, blending the imagery with hand crafted design from myself and others on my team.