Case study: AASHTO Hilton Riverside Event Artwork

Tight deadline for large scale, high impact branding graphics

AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) is a Washington D.C. non-profit that represents highway and transportation departments. Their Annual Spring Meeting was fast approaching, and they needed help. Their design staff was inundated with work preparing event materials, so they contacted I Design to handle the highly visible event branding.

AASHTO was expecting high profile guests, and in turn they wanted I Design to deliver high impact branding to be placed in strategic areas including:

Window clings for the main Poydras Street entrance
Ceiling clings for in the third floor conference foyer
Floor clings for the entrance and lobby floors
Carpet clings for the meeting room elevator lobbies

The deadline was one week. No time for hours of planning and client meetings – this was a very hard deadline so we got to work right away. A simple project summary consisted of the following research and creative planning steps:

Client phone consultation – We discussed the purpose and goals that would drive the design. Impact was defined as the main goal.
On-site Hilton Riverside visit – We took pictures of all of the areas where the branding artwork would be displayed to get an idea of the scope, sightlines and backgrounds for each space.
Artwork creation – AASHTO provided us with the event logo and a sign template. We used these elements to create colorful, high-impact graphics that contrasted with the backgrounds and spaces.
File proofs – We created mock-up proofs using the on-site photographs (taken in item 2 above) using Adobe Photoshop to "place" the artwork onto the spaces.
Final files – All of the artwork was done in Adobe Illustrator. Once the proofs were approved, we output vector PDF files preflighted to the vendor's specifications.

The ability to create accurate proofs significantly sped up the approval process. Below is an example of the accuracy of one of the main entrance proofs. We emailed AASHTO proofs (the middle photo) for all of the artwork that was done. It's very hard to tell the difference between the proof and the actual completed artwork.

3 photos comparing before, proof and after