Skyline Spotlight: Meet Joe Moyer

Skyline Spotlight celebrates the talent and efforts of our amazing team. We spoke with Joe Moyer, Exhibit Designer, on how he started in the exhibit industry and what he enjoys most as a designer. Joe's dedication to excellence and collaborative spirit continue to make a significant impact on the projects he undertakes. 

Tell us about your history with Skyline. How long have you been with the company?
I joined Skyline in June 2019, right after I graduated college. I worked at the Eagan headquarters, and later moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It was about nine months of working with the exhibit design team in person before I started working remotely in March 2020. During that time, I was able to familiarize myself with the company, get to know the people I work with, and gain a firm grasp of the operations and products. It was the perfect amount of hands-on training. One thing I miss since working remotely is seeing the exhibits as they’re built. I remember the first booth I designed, and I went to the set-up area to see it – thinking I actually did this! 

What is your role at Skyline? What’s the day-to-day of your role like? 
It depends on the type of projects I’m working on. Recently, I’ve been working more on large exhibit design projects, which require a different skill set than smaller projects. With larger projects, our clients need to see exactly how it will look on the show floor, down to the details of each graphic. So, it requires a lot of attention to detail and making sure that we’re accommodating to their specific requests and how they want to use the space in the exhibit. This includes digital activations, meeting areas, hospitality features, storage space, and product displays or demos. 

It’s exciting working on a larger project that includes unique features and digital activations in the design, carving out what it will look like, and playing with the exhibit space. A recent project I was working on had a unique challenge – they had giant machines that needed to be displayed in the exhibit. I didn't have the exact sizes or total number of how many they wanted to see, so I created an exhibit design for a flexible number of items while accommodating additional requests to organize the space in a way where you can see everything. 

What’s a cause that you are passionate about? 
I'm passionate about health and exercise, and it’s been a focus for me since high school. Maintaining consistency with exercise and nutrition has been a personal goal over the years. So, I spend significant time cooking, including all my 1-year-old son’s meals. My wife and I also plan to start our own garden, so we have homegrown food available. 

If you could take a trip anywhere, all expenses paid, where would you go? 
We traveled to Italy this summer. My uncle took my wife and I as a gift for our wedding. I’ve always wanted to visit Italy because my ancestors are from there. So, we traveled to the mountain village called Castrovalva, where I was able to find my family name “Dintino” engraved in memorials on the church and on a nearby mailbox! 

We stayed in L’Aquila and Rome, so we were able to experience the major historical sites like the Colosseum and the Vatican. L’Aquila was a nice break from the big city and really showed how the food and culture can differ for the inland mountain cities. 

Why did you choose to pursue a career in your field? 
When I was in high school, I was leaning toward engineering. I started college in Boulder, Colorado studying Aerospace Engineering, and then moved back to Wisconsin and changed my degree to Industrial Design. My focus was on product design – anything from electronics, furniture, shoes, etc. 

I hadn’t considered exhibit design until shortly before I graduated college, but my degree was a good segue. I was working on my senior project in my final semester – designing a booth for my senior show. I met Adam Deming, Creative Director of Exhibit Design, and our conversation was basically my first interview. My second interview went well, and I was hired at Skyline about a week after I graduated. 

Exhibit design is an interesting field, and I never imagined I would be doing so many different things in this role and working with a wide variety of companies across all industries. Every day looks a little different with new projects and challenges, and I like that more than the original career path I considered. 

Who within the company has been influential and inspiring to you?  
Adam Deming and Brent Reierson, Supervisor of Exhibit Design, have been instrumental in my experience at Skyline. Their guidance and willingness to invest one-on-one time to answer questions is so helpful. They consistently go the extra mile to ensure everyone on our team feels supported and comfortable. If one of us is working late to finish a project, they’re willing to take time out of their day and help to make sure it gets done. 

Our team has great camaraderie, which is one of my favorite things about my job. We have daily meetings where everyone is welcome to join and share new designs, talk about something that they're having challenges with, throw ideas back and forth, and get feedback on the projects we’re working on. Especially with large exhibit designs, I value feedback and hearing different perspectives from our team. 

What have been your biggest accomplishments on our team? Tell us a win/success story that you’re proud of.  
One project that stands out is Compass Community Living, which was a collaboration with Lisa Venegas, Senior Account Executive. I’ve worked with Lisa on a few projects, but this was one of our biggest – a 30 by 50-foot exhibit for LeadingAge Annual Meeting 2022. It was a really fun project to design – a very unique exhibit with a lot of custom elements. 

Compass Community Living provides culinary services to the health and senior living industries. Hospitality and food service were the primary focus in the exhibit, including two kitchen and food service areas in corners. The corners were built with 16-foot custom-designed wood structures that encompassed the kitchens. The center area included two towers connected by an arch and two hanging signs above the exhibit. I went to the show in Denver, Colorado, and the exhibit was very impressive. There were professional chefs at each kitchen station, serving everything from steak to tacos. The food was amazing! I could tell Compass Community Living made a significant impact at the show and it was by far the biggest exhibit there. 

The project is one of my favorites because of the unique structures I was able to design, and it provided a little extra freedom to be creative. Compass Community Living has continued using this exhibit - reconfiguring the structure for a fresh aesthetic at various trade shows. The custom features are repurposed and utilized in a new, open-concept configuration. 

Bringing large projects like this one to life requires teamwork and collaboration across many departments of the company, including sales, leadership, marketing, digital, and more. It was rewarding to see the booth in person, brought to life at the show, and full of people.