As the creative director for a student-run hackathon called CuseHacks, I have been in charge of creating and maintaining the hackathon's branding across print and digital mediums, which has required me to help solve various problems with our brand image.
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Defining a hackathon
One of the biggest problems I had to help solve with the branding was communicating what exactly a hackathon is. At club fairs, many people thought we are a cybersecurity club — which we are not.
How might I portray CuseHacks as the creative and technical innovation marathon that it is?
Logo Sketches
These are some of my sketches that I did when doing explorations of the CuseHacks logo design.
The logo and wordmark
I ended up going with this logo for multiple reasons. First, the brain in the center signifies the left and right brain appeal we wanted CuseHacks to have. We wanted the hackathon to appeal to computer science majors, design majors, and anyone with an interest in solving problems using technology.
But survey data from past CuseHacks events indicates that our largest audience are STEM majors. So that is why I included the brackets as a nod to the coding aspect of the event.
Final designs
CuseHacks website
For the upcoming CuseHacks 2024 hackathon in the fall, I redesigned the CuseHacks website to build excitement about the event, communicate event details, and direct potential sponsors to get in touch with us.
When I worked on the CuseHacks website in the past, I coded it myself. However, for this redesign I worked with a developer to code it after I designed the site in Figma. I used my skills in both design and web development to effectively communicate and collaborate with the developer to implement the design.
Logo animation
I animated the logo for CuseHacks Beta 2024 and this animation played at the beginning of the opening event.
Social Media Posts
For CuseHacks Beta 2024, I designed social media posts to keep people updated on our events and to introduce CuseHacks to new people.
In the spring of 2023, the CuseHacks Instagram had been dormant for over a year. I designed posts for that years hackathon, resulting in a 4.5% increase in followers. Since then, I have further increased our social media follower count.
Flyers
I designed a flyer for CuseHacks Beta 2024 to communicate that the event is for people who want to create a coding project. Many people assume that a hackathon is a cybersecurity related event, so this flyer helps to correct that assumption.
Digital sponsorship package
For the upcoming CuseHacks 2024 hackathon in the fall, I took the copy from our sponsorship chair and formatted it into a document for our sponsorship package to go on our website.
Slides
For CuseHacks Beta 2024, I created a slide deck for the opening event. It was especially important to make all the information clear because the rest of the hackathon would take place remotely, so people had to know the rules and how to get in touch with the organizers.
A-frame sign
I designed this sign for CuseHacks 2023 to be displayed in the student center during the hackathon. This sign uses an old version of the CuseHacks logo.
Club fair poster
To promote our spring hackathon, CuseHacks Beta 2024, at the club fair, I designed a large poster to hang from our table. Since there were so many clubs vying for everyone's attention, I wanted to have this large poster to make people who pass by want to learn more about the event.
Digital signage
For CuseHacks Beta 2024, I designed digital signage to promote the event. Even though there were two orientations that the signage needed to be designed for, I kept the look and feel of both versions similar so that people didn't get confused after seeing both.
Another constraint I designed for was that all the digital signage is displayed on a loop, with each sign being displayed for 15 seconds. I limited the text on these designs and used the CuseHacks arrow design pattern I created to guide the eye towards the QR code.
Shirts
I designed shirts for CuseHacks 2023 in two different colors — purple for the participants and green for the event organizers. These shirts use an old version of the CuseHacks logo.
3D prints
For CuseHacks Beta 2024, I 3D printed award medals to give out to the winners of the hackathon. I also 3D printed our logo to display at the club fair to draw interest to our table.
Lessons learned
Communicating design choices
As the person in the organization in charge of design and creative direction, I had to think of new creative concepts and communicate the value of those concepts to the rest of the team.
A creative team of one
As the only designer on the team, I needed to use a lot of different skills and software, which taught me unique workflows that help me to efficiently get design tasks done.
