The Brief
Aveda Congress is a multi-day gathering designed to connect Aveda’s global network of artists, salon and spa leaders, and brand stakeholders. It is a moment for the community to reunite around shared values. A place to celebrate boundary-pushing artistry, actionable business strategy, and brand vision.
BeEvents was engaged to design and produce the Experience Area, a branded hub and central gathering space for the event. The ask was clear: create an environment that aligned with Aveda’s brand values and refreshed visual aesthetic. A place where attendees could engage with the brand, reconnect to their shared purpose of using beauty to uplift people and the world around them, and leave proud knowing they belong to the greater Aveda community.
With a dedication to artistry and improving the world through beauty, the passion was innately there. What Aveda needed was an experience to match it, one that could hold the tension between scale and intimacy. The 1.6-million-square-foot venue needed warmth and soul to draw people in, encourage conversation and experimentation, and serve as a catalyst for belonging.
Our Work
Design | Production | Logistics
The Experience Area had to capture the essence of the Aveda brand: the soul, the passion, the care. That meant designing an environment built first around meaningful engagement, and then around an aesthetic that honored it.
We started with the goal of shifting attendees from passive observers to active participants. The layout was conceived as a continuous, curved environment where a multitude of learning moments and hands-on activations operated simultaneously. This encouraged guests to move naturally throughout the area, guided by curiosity rather than instruction.
The Minneapolis Convention Center demanded design at scale. We created a defined entrance to establish a sense of arrival, signaling that the Experience Area was its own world within the context of the larger event. The interior was designed to feel intimate yet expansive without losing warmth.
The aesthetic brought the space to life. Using Aveda’s refreshed visual language, we featured lush living botanicals, warm wood paneling, raw ingredients, and rich deep greens to created an aesthetic rooted in nature. Large-format imagery and rich product displays brought vibrancy, scale, and energy to the space. Every element intentionally contributing to an experience as cohesive and considered as the products themselves.
Each activation was designed to lift the brand moment in specific and intentional ways: deepening product knowledge, connecting attendees to Aveda’s mission, celebrating artistry, engaging the community at the heart of the brand, and creating personal moments of belonging.
The Experience
There are spaces where the energy pulls you in before you’ve even entered; for 2,300 Aveda professionals, the Experience Area was exactly that. Larger-than-life Aveda letters and an ornate, printed arch flanked by towering tropical palms marked the threshold between the convention center and the living brand world inside. From there, curiosity led the way.
Demonstration stages drew crowds naturally, artists working live, fielding questions mid-technique, presentations turning into shared discovery. Ingredient stations connected attendees to the science and story behind the products they use daily. Aroma Stations and the Aroma Bubble, a transparent dome filled with jewel-toned lounge seating and singing bowls, invited guests to slow down and let their senses lead.
The Aura Photo experience was the social anchor of the event. Printed portraits of personal energy fields sparked conversation of comparing colors and decoding meanings. And a lucky few walked away with mini-aura readings. Connection flourished.
At the Gratitude Tree, a living birch tree, attendees paused to write personal reflections on seed paper tags and tie them to the branches. By the end of the first day, it was full. The Water Walk was a pause for purpose. Dedicated to charity: water, a long term partner of Aveda, this symbolized the weight that millions carry to simply access clean water. An important reminder that belonging to the Aveda community means standing for something larger than beauty.
The Experience Area undeniably became the connective tissue of Congress. Proof that when a space is built around belonging and connection, people find their way to it.