A playful activation that gave DC's tallest landmark its smallest and most charming visitor.
A custom illustration and interactive game asset designed for Destination DC's client open house, bringing a beloved piece of DC's living culture into a tactile brand experience built for the room.
OVERVIEW
CREDITS
Poster Illustration & Sticker Design → Yasmine Bouchlaghem
Sr. Creative Direction → Alex Gnafakis
Project Management → Candyce Beatty
INDUSTRY
Tourism
SERVICES
· Illustration
· Print Event Poster Design
· Sticker Design
STACK
Illustrator
Procreate
CLIENT
Destination DC
Destination DC needed an activation piece for their client open house that could hold its own in a professional event setting while still inviting people to genuinely engage with it.
The brief wasn't a typical print deliverable. It called for an illustrated game asset that functioned as both a polished design object and a tactile interactive experience.
The concept had to feel native to DC, instantly readable, and magnetic enough to draw a crowd without relying on instructions to land.
THE CHALLENGE
THE STRATEGIC APPROACH
The marketing team arrived with a concept rooted in DC's living culture: the giant pandas currently resident at the Smithsonian's National Zoo have become one of the city's most talked-about tourism draws, and placing one on the Washington Monument was a premise with built-in delight. The design challenge was making the execution precise enough to earn it. An illustration that reads clearly at sticker scale, a dashed target outline that guides without over-directing, and a poster composition that turns the whole thing into a visual payoff the moment someone gets it right.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
The panda and the Washington Monument backdrop were first illustrated together in Procreate, a full composition showing the panda climbing the monument, used to present the interactive concept to the marketing team and validate the visual direction before production. The panda was given a deliberately clean, graphic quality: expressive enough to have personality, simple enough to scale without losing legibility. Once approved, both assets were vectorized in Illustrator to create print-ready files, the monument scene as a poster with a dashed silhouette target, and the panda as a die-cut velcro-backed sticker. The two were designed as a matched set, with the sticker precision-fitted to the outline so that getting it right feels genuinely satisfying.
THE OUTCOME
The activation needed no introduction and generated exactly what it was designed to: a room full of engaged clients, genuine competition, and a few very satisfied winners. It turned a professional setting into a genuinely competitive one, proof that the right creative concept, executed with care, can shift the entire atmosphere of a room.
Both assets performed exactly as designed, the sticker landing cleanly against its outline and the poster holding its visual weight across the room. A two-piece system that felt effortless to play with precisely because nothing about its construction was left to chance.
2 printed assets precision-engineered to function as one interactive system
Multiple rounds played, genuine competition, and happy winners at the open house
