
YAY! PIN SHOW
OBJECTIVE
At the time, it seemed like every big city had an enamel pin show except for the Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland). I wanted to change that because there are so many awesome creators in SF and Oakland and I wanted folks in the pin collecting/creating community to know that and showcase their work.


WORK DONE
Client: Yay! Pin Show
Role: Branding and Event Planning.
PROCESS
I thought it would be fun to call the show the "Yay!" Pin Show; a play on folks calling the "Bay Area" the "Yay Area" as well as folks being excited about pins. Every pin show I've ever been to was a fun event full of awesome creators and collectors.
With the name in place, I had the idea in my mind of creating a bridge image (like the Bay or Golden Gate Bridge) because I visually liked how balanced "YAY" looked. With the "YAY" bridge image plotted out, I added some water and fog to the logo to make it even more bay centric. There were a couple iterations of this but the image here is the one I landed on.
With the logo in place, I needed to find a venue. I was lucky to have shown at 1:AMSF previously and they're always down to support small and independent artists. The owner Dan was down to host us for the day and I was able to negotiate a nice rate for the gallery while also keeping table fees for the creators super low. It was a win for everyone.
A teaser flyer was now out in the world.
PROCESS (CONT)
With a logo, venue, and teaser flyer out in the world, I needed to find creators haha. Luckily I was able to find more than enough folks to fill up the gallery, unfortunately more people wanted in than expected. But that seemed like a good problem to have. If all went well, we knew the next event could be bigger! With all the creators in place, the actual event was the next plan of action.

PROCESS (CONT)
We mapped out the event to make sure there was a good flow for folks to wander and loop. No getting stuck at dead ends haha. I also turned the YAY! logo into some pins in colorways of all the professional teams in the Bay. We announced on social media that they'd be giveaways to the first 100 folks.


FINAL THOUGHTS
The event turned out to be a big success! We had a long line of folks waiting to get into the event, so the giveaway pins were gone immediately haha. All the creators got a ton of exposure but more importantly sold a lot of pieces. Almost all the vendors said it was their best show and were excited for the next one (most of which joined us for the next one on top of even more creators).