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Qualys conference
Security at a Crossroads
since 2018
Qualys in the wild
Role
Timeline
Team
Tools
Visual Design, Branding, Graphic design, Marketing
About a month per event
Qualys marketing team, Develop team, Communications team
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Efter Effects, Adobe InDesign, Sketch, PowerPoint, Excel
Qualys participates in innumerable IT security-related events globally as well as their own conference in Las Vegas, named Qualys Security Conference: QSC.
Each year, I create the events’ branding from conceptualization to completion. For QSC I design the conference stage, signs, Q&A center booth, and other promotional materials, both digital and printed.
For external conferences such as Google Cloud Next, IBM, AWS, I create promotional assets including booth, sign designs, printed materials and merchandises based on host guidelines. I also design microsite and email designs to promote more participants to our booth.
On this page, I present some of our most successful conferences - Black Hat 2019, QSC 2019 and 2018 and various other conferences.
The BlackHat USA 2019
01
Las Vegas
Black Hat USA is the world’s largest leading information security event, providing attendees with the very latest in research, development, and trends. Black Hat USA 2019 opened with four days of technical trainings followed by the two-day main conference featuring Briefings, Arsenal, Business Hall and more.
Qualys at BlackHat 2019
Qualys has been participating in the event as one of the sustaining partners for over 10 years. Qualys has a booth each year introducing cutting edge concepts and promotions.
In 2019, Qualys wanted to promote a new, enhanced security service which was the Global IT Asset Inventory by using a new prescription for security concepts. By using the marketing concept coined by the executives, I created the visual assets for our unique booth, signs for the venue and tons of promotional signs for the Las Vegas airport. I also created marketing materials including digital and printed materials. In the event, we successfully launched our new service with 18,000 attendees.
Qualys booth graphics
I created all visual assets for the booth from scratch, based on the visual concept: A new prescription for security. I was the main designer of the project and I finalized it with the creative director.
Event merchandises
As one of the most effective promotional materials, designing distributable merchandise was a significant task. I designed t-shirts and other goods for the attendees.
Promotional signs at the venue
I designed promotional signs for the venue - Bellagio Las Vegas. Black Hat gave us the specs of the deliverables so I aligned our designs with their guidelines.
Promotional signs at Las Vegas, McCarran international airport
The big difference between 2018 and 2019 Black Hat was that Qualys paid for the promotional opportunities at Las Vegas, McCarran international airport. For such a big opportunity, I had the chance to design more than 20 different sizes of the signs based on the instructions I was provided. It was a great opportunity for both the company and me as well.
Digital campaigns
While I was working on the booth and various signage, I was also designing digital designs including event landing pages, social media campaigns and web banners.
The process- behind the scenes
As you can imagine this was a big project that I worked on for over a month. As the main designer for this project, I needed to understand what the executives wanted to promote through this event and what could be the best and representative visual which stands out among the hundreds of other participants. This shows a part of my thought process as well as the evolution of the design.
Gather the ideas
First off, I needed to understand the main topic. The executives already provided a marketing concept which was a prescription for security to promote a new service which was the Global IT Asset Inventory. Based on their ideas, I sat down to brainstorm, researched visuals and came up with a concept - using a pill.
Iterations
After I came up with the visual concept I experimented with different pill designs and layouts for the deliverables. During the iterations, I gathered ideas and narrowed it down to a particular direction with the team members.
Qualys Beyond
02
Global
As I mentioned earlier, Qualys has been participating in countless events worldwide. Regardless of the event’s scale or if it is internal or external, each event or booth graphic has its own design concept. It is always exciting to create the event concept with the team and see how the attendees worldwide actually use and enjoy it.
Qualys Security Conference 2019
Qualys Security Conference is an annual event for customers where attendees learn about Qualys products, watch demos and listen to keynotes by industry leaders. QSC in Las Vegas is the biggest event and it also happens in Dubai, Mumbai, Paris, Munich, and London. QSC 2019 in Las Vegas had over 700 attendees.
Unlike external conferences, the design and branding for QSC is more neutral, to ensure branding consistency and to turn the viewers’ attention to what is being showcased. So we use Qualys blue as a representative color while using different patterns as a decorative element each year. In 2019, we used a spread of subtle circles in the design background, which represented the idea of detection and data management.
Qualys Security Conference 2018
In QSC 2018 in Las Vegas was my first internal conference branding and design experience. For this event, I designed a range of items, from small ones such as pillows for the dinner party to more significant ones such as stages and presentation designs.
The concept of QSC 2018 branding was gleaming triangles that represent a shield that enables safe data gathering. I designed the digital and printed materials as well as a conference movie.
Qualys in external events
Here are external events including AWS 2019, Google Cloud Next 2019, Black Hat 2018 and RSA 2018. The concepts of the designs were decided based on the conferences’ guidelines. I not only created the booth graphics but also short informative movies that played in the booth on a loop.
03
Reflection
Holistic design
From my event design experience, I learned the connection between the physical and digital worlds. Since I created designs on a much larger scale by using my comparably small desktop I needed to understand the measurement system. I had to fully grasp how different the full-sized products would look versus the images on my monitor.
At the same time, I had to communicate with the vendors who were in charge of producing actual products such as signages, stages, and other goods. Collaboration with external experts was one of the keys to the whole deal.
Overall, it was a great experience working as the main designer for those global events and it helped me to understand the inclusiveness of physical and digital designs.
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