Event Design for Amazon CES 2025

Client:

Amazon

Industry:

Technology

+ Project Information

Constraints & Context

Working within Amazon Ads' new brand guidelines, we had to navigate:

Color limitations: Squid ink, teal, and taxi yellow only—avoiding neighbor booth colors
Typography: Ember Modern Display font family exclusively
Aesthetic goal: "Quiet luxury" with 1950s-60s commissary theme
Stakeholder complexity: Internal brand committee oversight during active rebrand
Timeline: 3-day sprint from exploration to client presentation

Direction 1

Warped Landscape

Dynamic, energetic, perspective-driven
Explored dimensional textures and environmental graphics that played with perspective and depth, drawing from the commissary's architectural language.

Direction 2

Shimmer Tile

Geometric, systematic, modular
Created a modular tile system using varying opacity levels of teal rectangles to build sophisticated textural backgrounds. This approach emphasized surface pattern and subtle shimmer effects while maintaining clean typography hierarchy, offering a more geometric interpretation of luxury.

Direction 3

Levels of Cool

Dimensional, spatial, layered
Developed a cohesive visual system built around dimensional 3D typography and layered teal backgrounds. This direction emphasized spatial hierarchy through varying scales of typography and created a modular approach that could work across event signage, invitations, and wayfinding materials.

Collaborative Evolution

The final direction emerged through collaborative refinement rather than individual ownership. While our explorations provided foundational thinking around textural approaches, the breakthrough came through team collaboration:

Texture Development: Brett and PPDS collaborated on refining the shimmer glitter background treatment that became central to the final identity
Logo Design: Joe Jacobson designed the CES 2025 logo that anchored the entire system
Color Strategy: Collectively landed on squid ink and teal as the dominant palette with strategic taxi yellow accents

Where We Landed

The Final Direction

Subtle, sophisticated, premium
The final direction took the textural thinking from our explorations and refined it into something more premium. We used subtle shimmer backgrounds in deep navy with diamond pattern accents and Amazon's smile logo woven in as texture. The typography remained bold and clean to work across web, print, and environmental applications.