Paul Rogers met Matt Haligman 40 years ago in his first college design class at Art Center and they’ve been friends ever since. Today, Matt Haligman forms one half of the San Francisco agency, Citron Haligman with his partner Kirk Citron. Together, the three of them worked for a year to create the Trailblazer campaign for Dreamforce, the massive annual Salesforce conference in San Francisco. The imagery appears on everything from lapel buttons to enormous on-site murals and posters.
The trailblazer theme was the brainchild of the Salesforce CEO himself, Marc Benioff. His inspiration; the National Park near his home in Hawaii. He saw many parallels between his vision of the Salesforce Community and the spirit inherent in our National Parks, and a perfect theme with which to brand Salesforce story. Those who attended this most recent Dreamforce convention noticed right away that something was different in just about every way. Every aspect of the experience from the physical layout of the conference floor with it’s actual “trailhead” (also the name of Salesforce’s online tutorial) to the signage and the overall in-person experience reflected the new theme. Posters highlighted some of Salesforce’s biggest corporate adopters as “trailblazers.” All of these visuals were the work of Illustrator/Designer Paul Rogers working closing with Citron Haligman and Marc Benioff. Paul was able to place established salesforce characters like Einstein as well as a wide range of imagery related to Salesforce customers within a national park setting in sly and inventive ways. His retro WPA style aligned perfectly with the goals of the campaign and makes it all seem kind of “believable.”
