How to Use Design Systems to Scale Event Design
Thursday 
August 
31
 at 
7:00pm
Clear your calendar - It's going down! You're invited to take part in the festivities. Come one, come all, bring a guest, and hang loose. This is going to be epic!

David Doe

Designer - Redshoe


Product
Text goes here
X
Services
Text goes here
X
Blog
Text goes here
X
Resources
Text goes here
X
Customers
Text goes here
X
Support
Text goes here
X
About
Text goes here
X
Product
Services
Blog
Resources
Customers
Company
Login
Request Demo
Support
Request Demo
Text goes here
X
Try for Free
Text goes here
X
Sign In
Text goes here
X
← More Articles
Text goes here
X

Sign up

Get these in your inbox every week!

Written by Lizzy Hindman-Harvey

@bennydotevents
Text goes here
X

How to Use Design Systems to Scale Event Design

January 4, 2019

Whitepaper

How to Use Design Systems to Scale Event Design
Try It Free
Text goes here
X
ivy zhao headshot

Written by Zach Napolitano

@funeral_z


7 Ways to Improve On-Site Communication With Your Team and Your Guests

July 31, 2018

Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.


As a designer, it's easy to get caught between your creative process, and your deadlines. You identify the problem, devise the solution, and iterate. It's not always efficient, but you plow ahead anyway.


When we first started Splash Creative — design services for our customers — it was challenging to marry the creative process with tight timelines. The event industry moves fast — and we had to make sure we were moving just as fast, without sacrificing our creativity.


Today, I lead a team of 13 designers who create around 2,700 event templates on Splash a year (on top of onboarding 80 customers a month). The secret?


Start thinking about design systems. Here's how:

tableau first customer conference 2008

Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.


Here’s how we did it:

1. Take inventory of your event assets

books for event planners

It’s difficult to scale without knowing what you need. Putting a number on how many events your company hosts is a good starting point, but if you want to maximize your efforts, you have to get specific. 


Is your event public or private? Exclusive to VIPs or open to a general audience? Ticketed or RSVP? What event promotions or emails will you need?

 

This is important because things will differ based one each use case. If you know this year that you will have to design event pages for happy hours, a conference, and a gala, you will also need know the details for each. Happy hours aren’t always public-facing and conferences usually have more content blocks than other types, but what about everything else?


How we do it at Splash: We document exactly what we know about each use case (event types, promotions, etc.) and compile fact sheets containing everything we know and everything we’ll need.

All these events, especially our hosted events, have been integral in building our brand and community and have played a huge role in growing at the scale and level and pace that we did.

Amy Barone, Senior Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau



2. Reduce, reuse, recycle your assets

books for event planners
the art of gathering

Image: Penguin Random House

The last thing you should do is create hundreds of custom anything.


Once you’ve identified the assets needed for each event type, the next step is creating assets your team can repurpose. Think Play-Doh masquerading as content blocks.


In other words: avoid one-offs. Build assets with double or triple duty potential whenever possible. When you get it right, your team’s assets should cover 80-90% of your event use cases. The use cases your assets can’t cover are also important — and I’ll explain why later on.


How we do it at Splash: Using blocks and containers with broad applicability means the difference between designing an event card from scratch and modifying an existing event card within minutes. 

When you get it right, your team’s assets should cover 80-90% of your event use cases.

Leandra Elberger

Director of Communications & Events at Venture for America


3. Share the (asset) wealth

books for event planners
into the heart of meetings

Image: Conference Matters

You can’t scale event design in isolation. Whether you're using automation software or storing files in the cloud, sharing newly created assets with every member of your team is crucial to scaling.


Whatever sharing system you choose, don’t leave assets stranded on the island of your computer. The real beauty of sharing the wealth is empowering others to execute on your vision.


And it’s not just about making sure these assets are available, but that they’re organized, too. To truly reduce friction, keep your team’s favorite assets in a central, logical location so everyone knows where they live. Then make sure everyone uses it.


How we do it at Splash: Every time someone creates and saves a block via Splash, it’s automatically added to everyone’s shared-block library. If someone needs a block, they don’t have to create one or waste time finding the owner. They just remix the existing block.

Show your sales team the data and the ROI they get for taking those extra minutes to get people to register. Show them that their time investment is worth it.

Amy Barone, Senior Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau


4. Put a rigorous QA system in place

event planner books
open space technology harrison owen

Image: Google Books

Things that don’t work don’t scale. When designing your events, each touchpoint should not only be on brand, but it must also deliver the same experience on desktop, mobile, and tablet.


That’s why nothing leaves our team without scalability and brand consistency checks.


How we do it at Splash: When our team builds a block on desktop, we also check it on mobile and tablet, repeating the check for every block made. When we're done, there’s an entire template QA'd for brand and function across devices. 

5. Know when to break the system

event planner books
wayshowing wayfinding

Image: designworkplan

tableau on-site customer engagement

You’re probably thinking: I understand why we need systems, but how can I maintain uniqueness and personalization for each event? How do I make sure they don’t start to look like the same thing over and over again?


You may fantasize about meeting every use case when building your inventory of assets but the truth is, you won’t. Not all assets will meet Play-Doh criteria and it’s near impossible to account for each one.

 

So, when you’ve got your system in place and something unexpected comes up. What do you do?


This is where the magic happens — you break the grid. You face the charge of making something new. You move away from tasks and start solving new problems. That's when creativity begins.

6. Create the best guest experience possible

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.


At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.

on-site event email
on-site event email

Want to get a glimpse of event design systems in action? See how AppsFlyer uses Splash to design, customize, and collaborate on 250+ events a year — with only 3 designers.

author

Lizzy Hindman-Harvey

Lizzy is the Director of Splash Creative, our internal multi-disciplinary creative team. Over the course of 3+ years at Splash, she has been fortunate enough to work with Fortune 500 companies, boutique agencies, and small startups. She holds an MLA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is passionate about design systems and the creative process. In her spare time, she makes music, drawings, and gardens.

Get the guide that'll help you optimize every part of your event program (landing page, design assets, and promotions all included).

Start Exploring
Text goes here
X

It's finally here: get the full HBR report on the Event Marketing Evolution

Download It Now
Text goes here
X

Ready to measure event ROI? We make it easier.

Talk to us!
Text goes here
X

Want more reading material? Dig into our HBR report on the state of event marketing (benchmarks, budgets, and metrics all included!).

Read it Now
Text goes here
X

It's finally here: get the full HBR report on the Event Marketing Evolution

Download It Now
Text goes here
X

Home

For Marketing
Text goes here
X
For Sales
Text goes here
X
For Recruiting
Text goes here
X
For Ticketing
Text goes here
X

Product

What's New
Text goes here
X
Virtual
Text goes here
X
Overview
Text goes here
X
What's New
Text goes here
X
Virtual
Text goes here
X
Design
Text goes here
X
Marketing
Text goes here
X
Workflow
Text goes here
X
On-Site
Text goes here
X
Integrations
Text goes here
X
Analytics
Text goes here
X
Compliance
Text goes here
X

Services

Overview
Text goes here
X
Onboarding
Text goes here
X
Customer Success
Text goes here
X
Design Network
Text goes here
X

Resources

Blog
Text goes here
X
Resources
Text goes here
X
Release Log
Text goes here
X
Education
Text goes here
X
Webinars
Text goes here
X
Run of Show
Text goes here
X
Hall of Fame
Text goes here
X
Playbooks
Text goes here
X
Webinars
Text goes here
X
Splash Studios
Text goes here
X

Company

About Us
Text goes here
X
Customers
Text goes here
X
Team
Text goes here
X
Offices
Text goes here
X
Events
Text goes here
X
Careers
Text goes here
X
Press
Text goes here
X

Copyright © 2020 Splash

Try It Free
Text goes here
X
Talk to Sales
Text goes here
X
Pricing
Text goes here
X
Terms
Text goes here
X
Privacy
Text goes here
X
Security
Text goes here
X
Subscribe
Text goes here
X
Powered by Splash
CONTACT THE ORGANIZER
Google   Outlook   iCal   Yahoo

Get Started

Industry
Apparel & Fashion / Retail
Broadcast Media / Media
Computer Games
Consumer Electronics
Events Services
Financial Services
Health / Wellness / Fitness
Higher Education
Hospitality
Information Services / Technology
Internet
Leisure, Travel & Tourism
Marketing / Advertising
Medical
Government / Non-profit
Publishing
Real Estate
Sports
Staffing / Recruiting
Other
processing image...
Add to my Calendar
  • Google  Outlook  iCal  Yahoo