cisco live! 2020

Global brand experience specialist George P Johnson (GPJ) contracted Design f9 to design several exhibition spaces in one of the halls at Cisco 2020, as well as the Gateway VIP situated in one of the rooftop gardens.

Cisco Live is of course Cisco’s world-renowned annual education and training conference, aimed at IT Professionals. The 2020 event was held in Fira de Barcelona, Spain. Fira de Barcelona is one of the more important trade fair organisations in Europe. This is in terms of the quality of events (Cisco Live, for instance) and the volume of them.

Design f9 was given solid guidelines to follow regarding the shapes, colours and general aesthetics of the overall design.  Each year Cisco has a 'shape theme', for 2020 the theme was capsules, and each area was to incorporate the shape in as a creative a way as possible. For instance, some made use of graphics to illustrate the shape, while some others used the shape in the pattern of the carpets to create different zones within a space.

Aside from the guidelines surrounding shapes, colours and aesthetics, we at Design f9 were allowed to get as creative as we liked (the images on this page show that to great effect).

Cisco Live! 2020

When taken at face value, it would be easy to say that Cisco Live is just one more customer event. While Cisco does certainly the conference as a way to roll out new services and products, the bulk of the conference is more about bringing customers, partners and technical staff together so they can talk about solving problems.  People call this a conference, but the truth is that word just does not do justice to the experience.

Two areas of design we were responsible for…

Duo Security: The colour assigned to this area was green. This setting contained a small lounge area, with 6 back-to-back interactive kiosks. It also had large, custom ‘Duo’ buzz-wire game; this was included to help entice people over.

Gateway VIP: The Gateway was assigned the colour blue. This was the largest and, technically speaking, most challenging area that Design f9 worked on at Cisco Live 2020. The structure that was created here was designed in the style of an outdoor, relaxing cabin – in the shape of a Cisco tine (capsule).

Following the capsule or tine, theme the extremities of the structure were curved. The 'cabin' was clad in copper paint and timber louvres. Being located in a roof garden brought its own design challenges – we had to make sure that the structure didn't cover either of the two large vents in the garden. We also needed to ensure that the roof could hold the weight of the structure.

Getting the required materials on the roof was a design challenge too, as we had to ensure certain pieces could fit through doors and into the service lift.

The Gateway VIP area was home to:

•  bar

• lounge

• games room

• Massage Room

• Private VIP Lounge

The Gateway VIP area was heated and also fully glazed so that anybody that walked through the Fira de Barcelona would be able to see right into the structure – further helping to entice people to explore Cisco Live.

While certain aspects of the designs were indeed challenging, the whole experience was extremely gratifying. Of course, the obligatory 3D models were also included. The event itself was unfortunately cancelled, due to the coronavirus pandemic of that year, but the preceding event of 2019 attracted 110,000 visitors. Fira de Barcelona has been around for 100 years, and it was an absolute pleasure to design for Cisco at such a prestigious trade fair… Even if it sadly could not go ahead.