Tableau Conferences & Events
TABLEAU BRANDING, VISUAL DESIGN • 2021
Designing for thousands of data people
There is no better way to see the Tableau spirit come to life than during our in-person conferences and events. Talk about drinking the kool-aid. These events are where our marketing, event planning, and design teams all come together and put on a show for our amazing, passionate, vibrant customers and partners. The phrase "party with your data" is not an understatement.
The following is a wide representation of work over the years at multiple events where my role ranged from branding the event style guides, creating keynote presentations, designing custom swag, bringing ancillary events to life, and much more.
Bringing the events to life
Our design team is tasked with embodying the energy, passion, intelligence, and creativity into these events that elevate the entire experience. In turn, these events are a playground for the design team. They allow us to test new color palettes, visual styles, and design thinking with our most engaged audience. Some of the key design projects that go into our conferences are:
STYLE GUIDES
Each year our design team works hard to create a new brand & style guide that connects with our audience and brings energy to the events. They inform the look of the event, website, signage, and more.
CUSTOM SWAG
One of the most fun parts of the job - creating custom apparel for our Tableau Store and swag our community programs. Hearing that your design idea for a new coffee mug, poster, or shirt was a hit is the best compliment!
KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
These are quite the spectacle. Often with a lot of rehearsal and coordination, these main stage keynotes get a lot of attention and design support as we work to create the visuals that amplify our keynote speaker's message.
SUB-BRANDING
At each conference, there are many secondary events that also need their own branding. Some of my favorites to work on are Data Night Out, the Iron Viz competition, Executive Experience, and the Tableau Public Viz Gallery.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM EVENTS
OVER THE YEARS
Tableau Conference
Each year 15,000+ Tableau customers gather to celebrate all things data and analytics. Whether in Las Vegas, Austin, New Orleans, or virtual, the Tableau design team plays a key role in helping these events come to life.
Often times at Tableau Conference I work off of a robust style guide established by another member of the design team. With the branding already in place, I spend a lot of my energy focused on elevating the secondary experiences for the week-long conference. This includes designing our keynote presentations like Devs on Stage or Iron Viz, up-leveling the executive experience branding, creating custom swag, bringing the fan-favorite Tableau Viz Gallery to life, and much more.
SOME OF MY FAVORITE SWAG DESIGNED FOR TABLEAU CONFERENCE
UPLEVELED THE EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE BRANDING & COLLATERAL
SHOWCASING DATA AS ART
The Viz Gallery
The Tableau Public Viz Gallery is one of the highlights of every Tableau Conference and is a new way of looking at data. We celebrate of the creativity our talented community by displaying the top visualizations from around the world in our gallery. Printing these data visualizations for thousands to see suddenly shifts the view from insights on a laptop monitor to reflecting on them as works of art.
Over the years the Viz Gallery quickly turned into one of the fan favorites at our conferences, including appearances at Dreamforce and the remarkable Virtual Viz Gallery for our 2020 Tableau Conference when we couldn't gather in person.
Tableau Conference On Tour
In addition to helping bring the Tableau Conference to life each fall, I was also in charge of building out the style guide and designs for our global events from 2015 to 2017, which we call Tableau Conference on Tour.
These conferences are slightly smaller in scope, but bring the same energy and enthusiasm as our main conference. To achieve this we often introduce new brand elements like more expressive color palettes, photography styles, and graphic design. Below is a summary of my work for the 2016 Tableau Conference on Tour which traveled to 5 different cities around the world.
CREATING THE LOOK & FEEL
Tableau All-Hands
One of the main goals of our conferences is to turn our customers into fans of Tableau - but when it's an internal event, we fan the flames even more. I had the opportunity to art direct several of these All Hands events, where I worked hard to create a visual identity that captured the essence of our company.
I created a brand that centered on the always fun photo-booth photos, where I put the spotlight on the employees themselves. But these events are also a celebration of our product, so I carefully crafted the visual design to reflect real data about our employees and turn it into background texture - which eventually turned into what we call Viz Art.
Lessons Learned
HAVE FUN WITH YOUR DESIGNS
Often times the world of business intelligence software can be rather stuffy - but it doesn't have to be. By showcasing the fun and the creativity in our product and the people who use it we helped design events that were vibrant and a joy for everyone.
BUILD CONNECTIONS
A lot of the impact I have had as a designer on these big events happen because I work hard to build great relationships with my colleagues. Once those connections are established, the ideas, design, and creativity all are built from a solid foundation.
© 2021 Matt Knorr. All Rights Reserved.