Ascend Innovation Summit 2025
Goal
Design a logo, visual identity, and teaser landing page for the conference that reflects both the innovational nature of Ibotta and the Denver location. The identity should include elements that are adaptable within an omnichannel event-promotion strategy.
Overview
Created the logo and identity for Ascend Innovation Summit, a thought leadership conference presented by Ibotta planned for May 2025. It was a rebrand from Mobile Innovation Summit, which had last been held in 2019 and paused after COVID.
Process
After the Events team told the B2B Marketing team we've be bringing back Mobile Innovation Summit but wanted to refresh the name, they held a strategy session where we brainstormed new names for the event. I suggested "Ascent", which evolved into "Ascend" and was chosen as part of the name.
I was tasked with designing the logo, branding, and teaser announcement landing page for the event. The Events team wanted an impactful logo and branding that reflected both the innovational nature of Ibotta and the Denver location.
As the lead designer, I approached the design for this campaign in four steps:
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Researched online to build a collection of other conference and summit logos in the tech and marketing industry to get an idea of what was already out there.
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Led a brainstorm with the Creative team designers to put together a vision board with ideas.
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Designed three concepts for the logo and event branding using the board as inspiration.
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Presented the concepts to the committee leads on the B2B Marketing team, where I gathered feedback.
The committee loved the simplicity of the third concept, the word "ASCEND" with an upward arrow formed in the negative space between the "N" and "D".
The logo's arrow, the accent triangles, and the subtle Flatirons mountain imagery called back to the event name and Ibotta's hometown of Denver. The gradient suited the planned content of the event, which were innovations in AI-driven smart promotions.
Once the concept was approved, I expanded the visual identity in the form of a branding sheet with logo variations, color palette and codes, fonts, graphic elements, and layout examples. This sheet was for designers to use when creating all future marketing assets for the event, including paid ads, owned social, the website, promotional products, and event-specific materials such as badges, itineraries and signage.
Next, I worked closely with the Director of Production to gather all of the assets they would need to create a teaser video. I provided graphic elements and fonts from the sheet in ideal file formats so that his team could create an exciting, animated teaser video. You can view the video that was posted on LinkedIn to generate buzz around the upcoming event below.
Lastly, I designed the teaser landing page so that the LinkedIn post could link out to a page with additional info. The page included the teaser video, info on the upcoming event, its location, an interest form, and a widget with the latest news from Ibotta.
Outcome
The conference was promoted on LinkedIn but it appears it was cancelled at some point after the layoffs in late 2024, which my role was unfortunately impacted by. I'm still really proud of the conference branding I created, and am grateful for the opportunity I got to collaborate with the production team, which was a new experience for me.