branding documentation from this semester’s MHacks event. I worked on the design team for this event, and I will be serving as the design director for the next hackathon this march. In light of this, I’ve updated my proposal, which now reads as follows:
For my IP project, I plan on creating a comprehensive brand identity (logo, web presence, ios and android app designs, promotional materials) and event signage/wayfinding tools for MHacks 9, an upcoming hackathon organized by a student org I belong to on campus.
MHacks’ Annual hackathon is one of the largest of its kind in the US, and twice yearly brings together a group of passionate college-aged individuals from across the globe to compete in a weekend of software development, hardware hacking, networking, and more. With an ever-growing visibility on the national creative scene, it is more important than ever to ensure that our brand identity accurately reflects the unique personality of the organization and its members. That’s why it is important not only to produce a strong identity system for future MHacks designers to reference, but also a documented set of more general design conventions, tools, and resources that will assist in growing brand equity in MHacks for years to come.
This project will require significant research into the ‘user experience’ of an attendee, as well as continual iteration of all related visual elements as the brand identity is developed. In addition to the branding package for this specific event, I also intend to create a detailed general branding guide for the organization that will assist future members in their annual re-branding of the MHacks event while ensuring that core values are maintained even as visual elements are updated. This guide will include an overview of the organization’s ‘brand DNA’ and offer an event-specific introduction to design-thinking that should give future members (including and especially non-designers) a framework for understanding their audience and deploying an identity system that is relevant to them.
This project will allow me to develop leadership and communication abilities as I work through a practical design process with a multidisciplinary team of mainly non-designers. It will be crucial that I communicate design decisions to them from a user-focused perspective and work with them to find a common language for talking about design at MHacks. Being a hacker myself, I have a personal understanding of the MHacks brand and what it means to me, but I am interested to conduct research into the other’s experiences at our events and deliver a brand identity that speaks to them. Given the hackathon audience’s general enthusiasm for technology and interactivity, I intend to capitalize on my software and electronic abilities to develop custom wayfinding hardware and interactive digital displays for the event that will serve as both a utility for our attendees and a further extension of the MHacks brand into the technological landscape we are a part of. If they prove successful at the event in March, the designs and plans for these display prototypes will be included in the general branding guide for use at future events.
My goal is that between the varied design deliverables and hardware experimentation, this project will allow me to produce several portfolio pieces that will align with my work as a graphic designer and digital developer. The intersection of design and technology is where our future is being shaped, and this experience will provide me with a platform to engage with ongoing conversations about this exciting cultural space.
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