Designing brand systems and event identities for Yes Energy
Yes Energy
Brand system and annual summit identity
Yes Energy, a startup in energy market analytics, is building a scalable brand system that strengthens the corporate brand and supports its annual industry summits. Working within a maturing brand environment I refined the core system, expanded its visual language and shaped full event identities for Summit25 and Summit26. The work spans booth design, digital, environmental graphics, brochures, templates and multichannel collateral that bring consistency across product, sales and event communications. Structured workflows and AI supported concepting enable faster iteration, stronger alignment and cohesive experiences across all touchpoints.
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Jennifer Wanderer, Senior Brand and Experiential Designer
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Yes Energy needed a more cohesive visual foundation to support its corporate brand and expanding annual summits. The company produces complex energy‑market data and its teams rely on clear diagrams, templates and event environments to communicate technical information. The existing materials looked outdated and leaned heavily on the primary black‑and‑blue palette, leaving the brand’s stronger accent colors underused. A unified brand system brings the full palette forward and serves as the foundation for evolving the brand across year‑round marketing and large‑scale summit experiences.
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Create a modern and flexible brand system that elevates the brand, expands the usable color palette and creates clarity across every touchpoint. The system should support consistent corporate communication, strengthen the summit experience and give internal teams reliable tools for producing diagrams, templates and event materials at scale.
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I developed a unified brand system that modernized the identity, expanded the usable palette and introduced a clear structure for all corporate and summit communications. The system spans diagrams, templates, digital touchpoints, booth environments and the full event identities for Summit25 and Summit26, shown in the applications below.
Establishing a foundation for the Summit brand
Before I was brought on as an independent designer, the Yes Energy Summit changed its theme every year and had no established logo or visual system. I was hired to create a cohesive identity the event could build on, beginning with a unified lockup that introduced clarity, continuity and a recognizable foundation for all future Summits. This work spans the 2025 and 2026 events and began with the lockup concepts shown here. The team selected one to become the official Summit mark.
Moodboard inspiration for Summit25
I built a mood board to explore early visual directions using shape‑driven forms and the existing color system. This helped define the tone and creative territory for Summit25 before shaping the Summit’s visual direction.
Shaping the Summit25’s visual direction
I developed early concepts to explore how the Summit identity could evolve across different visual directions. I pitched three themes to the team and, once the preferred direction was selected, prepared a focused presentation to secure approval before producing the final assets.
Bringing the Summit25 identity to life
With the direction approved, I extended the system across all major event touchpoints from digital communications to on‑site materials. The examples shown here highlight a selection of the applications created for Summit25 and demonstrate how the identity functioned across the event experience.
Evolving the Summit lockup for Summit26
For Summit26, the team wanted to evolve the Summit lockup and bring it closer to the core Yes Energy brand as the event returned to Boulder. One early request was to explore replacing the O in EMPOWER with the signature triangle from the Yes logo, which led to a wide range of structural studies. Through iteration, it became clear that forcing the triangle into the letterform reduced legibility and added visual tension. We ultimately landed on direction 10, which preserved clarity and allowed the triangle to function as a supporting brand element. This exploration set the foundation for the next phase of development.
Building the Summit26 theme through research and AI assisted ideation
For Summit26, the client wanted a theme that felt like the Boulder Flatirons without relying on the usual Boulder visuals. They were open to exploring how AI could spark ideas, so I used ChatGPT to test their reference images. The results were generic because the inputs lacked context. I researched Boulder, built mood boards and created my own layout studies. I used those layouts to write stronger prompts, which produced clearer directions. The team selected one of the AI concepts and I later evolved it into a more refined and usable design.
Delivering the Summit26 event system
With the Summit26 theme defined, I expanded the identity into the event’s core communications and on‑site materials. The deliverables shown here reflect how the direction, shaped through research and early AI exploration, translated into the full 2026 Summit experience.
Corporate and Event Systems for Yes Energy
A curated selection of the systems I built for Yes Energy, including a sample from the Canva collateral suite, key slides from the primary presentation template, new product and acquisition marks added to their portfolio, a representative technical diagram and the visual themes developed for Summit25 and Summit26.
