ASHA Convention Wayfinding Graphics
Igniting innovation!
CLIENT:
The ASHA Convention is an event held by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, an association for audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and those within the field of hearing and speech science, primarily within education. It is one of the largest professional development events within this field, bringing in 15,000 attendees to each event. During my internship at Willwork Global Event Services, I designed large-scale, dynamic environmental and wayfinding graphics for signage and booths that attendees would interact with throughout the event.
OBJECTIVE:
ASHA’s Marketing team provided us with outlines for the theming of the event, which consisted of three core elements: illumination, education and Boston. the association wanted to symbolize how ASHA’s brilliant community ignites innovation in the field of speech and hearing science, providing the tagline: “Igniting innovation” as well as reference imagery of glowing neon signs, firework starbursts, and colorful lite-brite pegs. They also wished for the event to contain symbolism of education, a core pillar of the association. And finally, the last core theme was Boston. This event would be held at the Boston Convention & Exhibit Center, and ASHA wanted to add a local touch to further bring their community together by including symbolism of Boston’s history, landmarks, and culture.
PROCESS: Boston Illustration
For the membership services booth and speaker ready room entrance, Hand-drawn illustrations of iconic Boston landmarks were meticulously revised and refined over a light table and scanned to be transferred to digital artwork, A deep dive exploration of Adobe Photoshop brushes resulted in the appearance of watercolor paintings, reminiscent of childhood art classes.
PROCESS: Registration Graphics
When I created the graphics for the Registration booth and Photo-op areas, I was in close communication with representatives from ASHA, using their feedback to bring their vision to life. I used negative space to intersect elements of ASHA’s logo with silhouettes in motion, lit up by the glow of colorful forms to represent the spark of ASHA’s ever- innovating community, right as they check in to the event.
PROCESS: Wayfinding Signage
I was also involved In formatting ASHA’s existing brand elements to be used on wayfinding signage. These would help visitors make their way around the expo hall. This included aisle signs that hung from the ceiling, placards, meter boards, and entrance kiosks.
OUTCOME:
It was an amazing experience to be on the expo floor and see attendees taking pictures with their peers in front of my illustrations. That showed the effectiveness of how, including local symbolism, was able to bring people together. I was able to get some great feedback directly from attendees of the event and ASHA staff members, deeming the project a remarkable success! The folks at Willwork Global event services enjoyed it so much that my illustration of Boston’s iconic landmarks was installed as a custom hallway decal in the company’s Boston offices.
