Servers.com at GDC: a booth built for conversations
The graphics, signage and artwork for servers.com’s largest stand, designed onto the fabricator’s technical drawings. The stand itself was an open lounge anyone at GDC could walk into, coffee through the day, drinks after it, and two closed rooms when a conversation needed the door shut.
Short cut from the GDC 2025 wrap film.
Watch the full film →Challenge
At the world’s largest gathering for game developers, 400+ exhibitors compete with screens, giveaways and noise. Servers.com needed to stand out without becoming another loud booth on the floor.
Approach
The experience was built on contrast: disciplined brand presence, generous space, hospitality people actually wanted, and a content plan that kept the booth working before, during and after the show.
Outcome
The stand became a meeting destination: calm, recognisable, and somewhere people came back to hold their own conversations. What we filmed there ran on LinkedIn and YouTube for months afterwards.
3 daily wraps, 15 interviews and a recap, filmed on the stand by the content team
Our biggest booth yet; I designed its graphics to the fabricator’s drawings
Gameye, Nitrado, Nodecraft, Shockbyte and Photon Engine hosted on our stand
Open to anyone on the floor, with two closed rooms behind it for meetings
Strategy: stillness as a statement
When everything around you is maximalist, restraint becomes the loudest thing in the room. That principle shaped the spatial hierarchy, hospitality, signage, content, and every decision that followed.
Booth architecture, pattern, lighting, and signage built as one quiet system.
A booth that never raises its voice
One geometric pattern, one badge and a tightly controlled palette gave the stand instant recognition across architecture, signage, lighting and graphics. In a hall built to compete for attention, restraint was the differentiator: the booth read as unmistakably servers.com without raising its voice.
The render, turned into production-ready contractor drawings
From brand idea to buildable stand
The structure was engineered and drawn by exhibition contractors. I designed onto their technical drawings: the graphics, the pattern, the signage and the artwork packages, plus the presentation that ran on the stand’s iPads. The event and content team worked with the fabricators, the AV crew, the caterers and the photographers on everything else.
The presentation that ran on the iPads at the stand, for visitors to pick up and read
The experience in use
Quiet design. Full tables. Conversations longer than a pitch.
Meeting lounge, coffee bar, and informal networking across three expo days.
One event. A year of content.
Across three expo days the content team ran a live content studio from inside the booth. Daily wrap films were shot, edited and published while the audience was still on the floor. Fifteen interviews with founders, technical leaders and partners gave us close to a year of long-form editorial, plus a stack of short vertical cuts for social. Live coverage, photography and partner assets ran alongside it, and a recap film closed the week.
3 daily wrap films, 15 interviews, live social coverage, partner assets, and a final recap.
My part of the stand.
My part was the stand’s graphics and artwork. The build, the hospitality and the live content programme were run by the event and content team.
- Booth graphics, pattern, badge, and signage
- Production-ready artwork to the fabricator’s drawings
- The presentation on the stand’s iPads
GDC 2025 · Moscone Center, San Francisco
A booth people chose to come back to.
People came because the space worked: calm design, bookable meeting rooms, free coffee by day, drinks after hours, beautifully branded touchpoints, and partner zones worth spending time in. Every detail felt considered, so the booth stayed busy without feeling loud and became a reliable meeting point throughout GDC.
- Calm, recognizable presence on a crowded floor
- Meeting rooms and lounge space for real conversations
- Free coffee and drinks that encouraged repeat visits
- Branded details and partner zones carried the system end to end
If this is the kind of case you are hiring for, I am happy to walk through the decisions behind it.