BACKGROUND

Rose Hack is UC Riverside's 24-hour hackathon, one of the few women-centric hackathons in California! It was founded by the female leaders of the Women in Computing (WINC) and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Through a lively and exciting weekend, Rose Hack hopes to promote its mission to encourage individuals from underrepresented groups in STEM to gain experience, create strong networks, and build amazing projects through their shared passions in science and technology.

OBJECTIVE

Our goal was to host a fun and interactive weekend filled with workshops, activities, games, and networking opportunities for high school and college students to give them experience, support, and encouragment to pursue a career in STEM. During the 2021 and 2022 hackathons, as a team we also had to navigate the challenges of hosting a completely remote hackathon due to the ongoing global pandemic. We wanted to explore and solve ways to still bring a similar in-person hackathon experience despite being online.

MY ROLE

My role was to lead the hackathon's branding and create visual designs that aligned with the theme. I needed to create assets that would be used on our social media, website, promotional items, and other marketing materials. My co-lead and I were also in charge of running all the social media accounts and reaching out to other organizations and hackathons for cross platform promotion. A clear, cohesive visual identity and an organized marketing effort is needed to attract participants and create an enjoyable environment for them to participate in.

The Process

TIMELINE

Since the event is held in January of winter quarter, we worked heavily during the summer and fall. During the summer, we brainstorm and decide on a theme. We start the design process by creating mood boards of potential themes and consult with our team to gather feedback. We narrow down themes based on: what we think the hackers would enjoy, the feasibility of execution, and if it was multifaceted enough that we could create a lot of designs for. Once a theme has been decided, we start designing the logo and other on-brand assets, social media posts, the sponsorship packet, presentation slides, and help the Web Development team design the website.

Final Branding Guide 2021 (Left) & 2022 (Right)

When fall begins, we rebrand all our social media platforms and begin to promote our hackathon through various mediums. We also begin to work on merchandise designs to later give out to the participants during the event. To check out more of my design work from this project, click here!

Social Media Banners 2021 (Left) & 2022 (Right)

Sticker & Shirt Merch Designs 2021 (Left) & 2022 (Right)

There's always room for growth!

IMPACT & WHAT I LEARNED

During my time as Marketing Lead, we were able to get 500+ applicants to apply during both years and grow our social media presence by 45% despite being a fully remote event. I also received positive feedback from our team and many of our participants on our visual identity. Some participants even incorporated the theme into their projects which I thought was really cool! :) Despite my initial doubts, I felt fulfilled as a designer and as a lead that I was able to complete my job.

I was initially intimidated by this role because I had no prior experience. I had to learn important design fundamentals and how to use Adobe Suite for the first time. However, from this role I learned that it's never late to try something new and that there is always room for growth! I learned how important it is to be open to design feedback and criticism to be a better designer. Even though I had a year's worth of experience in this role, there were still new things I was learning during my second year. I'm excited to bring the knowledge that I've learned from this experience to my future design roles and grow as a designer!