Pittsburgh Pet Expo
The tail wagged the dog.
When I was asked to come up with a program for a pet expo that didn't yet exist – so no details – and the deadline was a week away, I made them up. The show's PR person and I, both in the dark, imagined what might be and got creative. We met the paper's deadline with a generic but enticing piece, and the show creators followed our lead.
Over more than a decade, our small team transformed the show into a major event for pet lovers in Pittsburgh.
A website for many audiences
The challenge for the website was making it work for multiple audiences with different purposes at specific times of the year. It needed to pitch the show to sponsors, vendors, and pet acts months before active promotion to the public began.
I developed the content structure and annual approach to accommodate changing needs and determined how information should be organized and presented each year. I eventually built daily event schedules into the site so our internal team could stay aligned and visitors could easily see what events were happening and where when they were made public.
I built this site from scratch, without a template, and it has remained in use as the event continues.
Connecting at a glance
Billboards and social media were key in promoting the pet expo, and are similar promotion tools — only the essential information that can be absorbed in the blink of an eye should be included. Adding a hint of other animals let the public know the show is more than dogs and cats alone. Scaling the design from a tiny social media banner to a giant billboard made it easy to meet deadlines while maintaining visual consistency.
A presentation that let the numbers and energy do the talking
To get sponsors and vendors excited about getting involved with the pet expo only required sharing the numbers that grew each year, and photos that told the story. I took photos and also worked with a photographer for winning shots that captured the excitement and helped sell the show for the next year.
