Event Design & Promotion · 2023
MozCon
Theme, identity, environment, and promotion for MozCon, Moz's annual SEO conference, led as Creative Director.
Overview
MozCon is Moz’s annual Seattle conference for the SEO industry, widely regarded as some of the best thought leadership in the field. Beyond the programming, it creates extraordinary goodwill for Moz and a real sense of camaraderie within the search community. Each year carries a distinct design theme; 2023 centered on “The Future of SEO.” Serving as Creative Director for the event, I owned the concept, coordination, direction, and production across the whole event.
The assignment stretched from the event identity through paid and organic promotion, email, motion, website art direction, environmental graphics, signage, swag, booths, and the main stage. The challenge was to make all of those pieces feel like one journey rather than a collection of branded deliverables.
Theme and identity
The direction began with retrofuturist travel posters and artwork that evoked the optimism of the Seattle World’s Fair and its Space Needle. Deep greens, dusty reds, space purple, and yellow accents created a flexible palette with enough range to work across both campaign graphics and a physical environment.
The visual story unfolded as attendees moved through the venue: from the collective, communal futuristic metropolis of the entry spaces into the deep-space exploration of the main stage, where the event’s biggest ideas were presented. With generative AI rapidly entering the creative landscape in 2023, the theme also created a natural opportunity to experiment with those tools while blending generated imagery with hand-crafted design.
Website refresh
The MozCon website was modernized alongside the event theme. It deliberately avoided becoming too specific to 2023: the foundation needed to remain evergreen enough to carry future years, while still allowing each event identity to have a visible presence. The result was a substantial improvement over the previous site and continued to support the 2024 event.
Promotional campaign
Promotion rolled out in waves across the year, beginning with early-bird tickets and moving through the primary campaign to the last-chance “Night Owl” offer. The team also produced coordinated speaker, sponsor, paid-media, email, social, and partner assets, giving each promotional stage its own emphasis without fragmenting the event identity.
Designing the event experience
Once the campaign system was established, it expanded into a complete conference environment: wall graphics, registration and exhibitor booths, wayfinding, photo moments, collateral, swag, and stage design. The work had to hold together at dramatically different scales, from a button or sticker in an attendee’s hand to the full-width main-stage screen.
The entry experience emphasized a shared future and community. As attendees moved deeper into the venue, the imagery became more exploratory and expansive, culminating in the deep-space main stage. That progression gave the theme a narrative arc people could physically move through.
MozCon 2024
Carrying the campaign into the following year with a new promotional emphasis and an expanded set of placements.
The 2024 system extended the established MozCon framework into early-bird social, paid, email, customer-hub, and partner-newsletter placements. The campaign could change tone and imagery while retaining the recognition built through the broader event brand.
I went back to Javi again for a polished intro video with a lot of character, and we developed this 2001: A Space Odyssey takeoff. It’s still one of my favorites.
Motion and production: Elda Flores Montelongo · Opening animation: Javi O’Neill · Event footage: GoNetYourself · Website design: Derrick Brown · Graphic design: Skye Stewart.