Background
BDO Canada is an elite partner of Golf Canada and therefore has a prominent presence at the largest golf tournaments every year - the Men's RBC Canadian Open and Women's CPKC, as well as the Amateur Championships held throughout the summer. My role as the lead designer on the event campaigns was to develop concepts that would showcase the BDO brand in a golf environment, both creating a fun and interesting setting for our guests, but also brand recognition for attendees of the event.
Client: BDO Canada LLP
Year: 2024 and 2025 (see bottom of page)
Services: Event concept creation, event collateral, joint branding, sport branding, sales content
My role: Lead Senior Designer / Design Manager - All designs had to be coordinated with and approved by the Golf Canada team.
The project (2024)
With BDO's elite sponsorship, they have a prominent presence at the RBC Canadian open and the CPKC Women's Open. Along with having a dedicated section for guests and clients, BDO branding is also featured in the Welcome area as well in volunteer areas and uniforms.
Challenge: This event is an excellent opportunity to reinforce brand recognition but the brand is also not the most "golf" friendly. How can we combine our standard branding while creating an elevated experience at a sporting event?
Solution: I developed three concepts with very different look and feels to try to understand what would work best for the audience. We ended up choosing Concept 3 to implement because the golf course pattern was something we could easily incorporate in a lot of materials while still keeping the BDO brand super prominent.
Concept 1: Pattern
Concept 2: Clubs
Concept 3: Green
Event execution
The only change we decided to make to concept 3 was to focus more on standard brand colours: red, charcoal and pale charcoal instead of green. The pattern would still bring some movement and interest to each of the pieces, but if our ultimate goal was a very "BDO" experience, we wanted to stick to standard branding.
Paid and social media
While we removed the green from most event materials, we did keep it in for the external promotion. We wanted this event to be clearly coded and recognized as a golf event as we shared on social and did promotion, and using the green along with standard brand assets was such an easy way to do this.
This pattern ended up being very well received and loved and while we took a break from it in 2025, it made some appearances in 2026 and as part of many other golf-related collateral.
The project (2025)
My role: Design Manager - I developed the concepts for the event and design was taken over by another designer on the team.
The 2025 event came with an increase to the sponsorship which meant BDO Canada wanted to create an even more elevated experience. Instead of creating concepts based solely on design, I came up with ideas of how the event space could be branded and elevated as well. This helped the events team to brainstorm further ideas to bring the event to life.
All concepts are featured below. The team decided to move forward with Concept 1 for a sleek, elegant feel.
Concept 1: Elegance
Concept 2: Clean lines
Concept 3: Fearless
