UpGuard Swag

Stickers, shirts, coasters, etc. for employees and marketing.

At UpGuard designers were in short supply. Luckily, talented designers were NOT in short supply. Between myself, the lead designer Ann, and our intern Talie, the Design team was a force to be reckoned with. We dealt with tasks of every sort. Amongst those tasks was marketing and sales material like swag which lead to a pretty cool result.

The Beer n’ Breaches event was a Bay Area meet up event that centered around two of the most important and popular topics of our time: cyber security breaches and drinking beer. UpGuard hosted an event that included pizza and beer (two of my favorite things) and cyber security (one of my second favorite things).

For these events, UpGuard needed a logo that said both Cyber Security and Beer. The logo was up to me. I came up with a design that looked like a beer glass with the bottom of the mug doubling as an eye.

Some people said “Ew, the bottom of the glass looks like an eye? You know that right? That’s creepy, I don’t like it.” To which I responded — that’s the point! Invasion of privacy and security is unsettling business. Using the shape at the bottom of a beer mug, I implied that prying eyes were everywhere (cue dramatic music).

The event, which’s main tenant included beer, of course needed some sick coasters. I’m super happy with the result, which was a coaster I designed around my Beer n’ Breaches logo. These were some nice coasters, if I do say so myself.

The event included swag ranging from UpGuard camera covers to various UpGuard stickers, all designed by yours truly.

Beer n’ Breaches was a great event, both informative and fun. Plus, got to see my designs in action, which were a huge hit.

Below is an important distinction to me in UpGuard swag. The top beer bottle opener was one ordered before myself and the now VP of Design arrived at UpGuard. The bottom bottle opener was one that we ordered. These two sit like this on my desk to this day as a reminder of the importance and impact of design, the meaning of attention to detail and the lack of it. A cheap, poorly proportioned design and a quality but cost-effective and well-proportioned design show me the difference between a design team that cares about the collateral with which potential customers interface and one that does not.

Whenever I’m thinking about cutting a corner, I look down at these bottle openers and remember the meaning of design and the importance of a design team’s commitment to excellence, all the way down to the most basic of levels.

Below are some company shirts that I made using my illustrations for UpGuard’s former three wave approach — discover, control, and predict.

Part of UpGuard’s brand was not doing things without meaning. This was true for even our marketing/tradeshow swag. An iceberg and grim reaper seem random at first but once you consider UpGuard’s goals they don’t seem so random after all.

UpGuard — look below the surface.

UpGuard — Cyber Security is dead. Long live Cyber Resilience!

I am very proud to have worked on all this swag. It’s nice to see some of your digital effort end up as physical product once in a while. That is why all these sticker prominently graced my laptop and currently grace my sketch book, which is very important to me.

Amongst UpGuard’s brand attributes is don’t do anything without meaning, and these stickers and swag are testaments to that goal.

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