Event case study · 2022 Annual Conference

Nurse Leaders Assemble!

Our first in-person conference after two years of pandemic bans needed to feel like a celebration — so the nurse leaders came back as superheroes.

Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim · February 6–9, 2022

The setup

The 2022 Annual Conference was our first major in-person event post-COVID. Large gatherings had been banned for almost two full years, and just by coincidence, the venue we’d contracted for the event, years prior, was the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

If you couldn’t tell from my Monomyth Comics side project or the Ben Day dots all over the site, I’m a big comics nerd. So when the planning committee and I started brainstorming themes, I immediately knew what direction I wanted to go, and the tagline seemed obvious: “Nurse Leaders Assemble!” Playing off Captain America’s iconic line, it would be both a call to action and a way to celebrate the return to in-person gathering, networking, and learning.

I pulled together a few ideas to show our contract graphic designer and let him get to work.

Avengers no. 1 comic cover with Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye charging forward — **The first round of reference covers I pulled for the designer** (none of this art is ours — it's Marvel's Avengers and A-Force, plus *The Vitals*, a real comic Marvel made honoring Allegheny Health Network's nurses and EMS crews during the pandemic). Click through for the team-shot poses and the nurses-as-heroes framing I was after.

The Vitals: True Nurse Stories comic cover, three nurses in scrubs and masks posed like a superhero team — **The first round of reference covers I pulled for the designer** (none of this art is ours — it's Marvel's Avengers and A-Force, plus *The Vitals*, a real comic Marvel made honoring Allegheny Health Network's nurses and EMS crews during the pandemic). Click through for the team-shot poses and the nurses-as-heroes framing I was after.

The first version

His initial version didn’t land well with the committee. They thought the color scheme was too dark, the characters too grim, the overall mood just not bright enough, and I agreed.

First version of the Nurse Leaders Assemble cover: four nurse superheroes on a shadowy street beneath black storm clouds and a dark purple sky — **The first draft.** Great linework, but storm clouds and shadows were exactly the two years everyone was trying to leave behind.

The revision

I went back and did some more work on comps, trying to find figures that were strong and hopeful without being too cheesy. I also remembered that Florence Nightingale (an icon of nursing) was known as the Lady with the Lamp, and I started thinking about connecting that with the Green Lantern somehow.

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow no. 1 comic cover, Supergirl raising a sword overhead against a teal sky — **Round two of references** (again, DC's art and a stock photo, not ours): brighter skies, upraised arms, figures that read as hopeful instead of grim — and lanterns, for the Lady with the Lamp.

Superman rising into a bright blue sky with sunlight breaking through the clouds below him — **Round two of references** (again, DC's art and a stock photo, not ours): brighter skies, upraised arms, figures that read as hopeful instead of grim — and lanterns, for the Lady with the Lamp.

I made a concept sketch for our designer and talked to him more about the committee’s feedback and what I was hoping to do with the lamp idea.

Rough Photoshop concept: Supergirl composited to hold a lantern aloft at the center of a pink sunburst, flanked by two other heroic figures — **My concept sketch,** assembled in Photoshop from the reference art: the Lady with the Lamp front and center, brighter palette, sunburst instead of storm clouds.

From there, he went back to work and came up with a new version that hit all the right notes.

Final Nurse Leaders Assemble cover: four bright nurse superheroes against a blue-to-red halftone sky, the winged Lady with the Lamp holding her lantern high — **The final key art.** The winged Lady with the Lamp took the top of the cover, the palette went bright, and the committee signed off. This became the visual identity for everything the conference touched.

The rollout

Once we had a final version agreed on, I worked with our partners at Cvent to get all of the specifications our designer needed for app assets. This was our first year with an app for Attendees to use and we wanted it to look great.

Conference app splash screen for phones, the full key art resized for a vertical screen — **The attendee app suite,** built to Cvent's specs: splash screens for phone and both tablet orientations, in-app and registration banners, a web banner, and the app icon.

Conference app splash screen for tablets in portrait orientation — **The attendee app suite,** built to Cvent's specs: splash screens for phone and both tablet orientations, in-app and registration banners, a web banner, and the app icon.

I also worked with our partners at Working Nurse to get a half page ad placed in their print magazine.

Half-page vertical print ad for the conference in Working Nurse magazine, with a registration URL and QR code — **The half-page print ad** in Working Nurse magazine, with the registration URL and a QR code in the house style.

The awards brochure

The biggest project for me and the designer was the awards program brochure. This always involved a lot of coordination between me, the designer, the awards committee, the program coordinator, each of the awardees, and the print shop we worked with. All of the nominations came in as 500-word essays, and I had to coordinate with the designer to see how much text we could actually fit on a page, then trim the nominations down by about 75% — not an easy task when you’re trying to do justice to a dozen or so highly accomplished nurses. Awards were decided fairly late in the planning process, and the brochures were typically 8-16 pages, so getting all of the text and photos ready with enough lead time for him to do his part was always a bit of a scramble. But you can see how well it turned out.

PDF 2022 Awards Program Brochure The finished piece — every nomination trimmed to fit, every photo wrangled, delivered to the print shop on time.