TAMUhack 2019-2020
TAMUhack19 was such an enjoyable experience that I felt inspired to help make it happen. So, after a round of getting to know the organizers, a round of applications and a round of interviews, I became part of the amazing team that organizes TAMUhack! .
Onboarding
I got to meet many great people on the team for the first time and there was so much going on that it was easy to feel intimidated. However, the design lead on the team was very caring and knowledgeable, and that really helped my get used to working wth the team and learning from experience. It is a very close-knit team so I had lots of fun spending time with the team inside and outside of the TAMUhack meetings. Although, since we were all passionate about hackathons, that topic was unavoidable during conversation!
Since TAMUhack 2019 ended just a month ago, my first task was to design a
statistics infographic for the event. This was the first time I used Adobe
InDesign and Illustrator. And I learnt a lot about the tools and the design
process.
I tried to visualize the data in a more interesting way instead of sticking
to pie charts and bar graphs, looking at other infographics and designs. I
kept the event theme in mind as well as color-blindness accessibility while
creating the infographic that flows well.
HowdyHack 2019
HowdyHack was a hackathon put up by a group of students from the coding
club. There was a merge discussed between the HowdyHack team and the
TAMUhack team, and HowdyHack is now part of TAMUhack, meaning that it would
be the next upcoming event for the organization.
To design this hackathon, we followed the timeline below. The timeline
ensured that we would have everything done by the start of registration for
the event.
We decided on a theme, "For Aggies, By Aggies", and I got started on
designing the website. I used Figma, an online prototyping tool and went
through many design concepts for the overall look of the website. We didn't
want it to look too generic, but we didn't want it to be too crazy either,
as it had to fit our hackathon image.
In the end, we settled on a design that's puts the focus on the regular
HowdyHack logo with an emphasis of being beginner friendly. The design was
pretty flat overall and with some simple human graphics to symbolize the
human interactions we hope to achieve.
I also worked on some of the promotional email banners and the tshirt design
for HowdyHack. I stuck to the overall theme of an icon collage, emphasizing
our brand image with the letter 'HH' and the blue palette.
In addition to designing the website, I worked on implementing it too. We
ensured that it was sufficiently responsive and made it as close to the
prototype as possible.
TAMUhack 2020
TAMUhack hosts workshops throughout the year, and we usually stick to a general theme for the promotional material. Keeping the themes of HowdyHack and our new icon in mind, I went with the icon collage again for the workshop banners. The banner had two different color schemes to fit the type of workshop we were running: company sponsored workshops or locally hosted.
For the event, Grace had an inspiration to go with a popart-styled theme notably with bold lines and thatch and dotted shading. Using that as our inspiration we developed the event website as the base for our designs again.
The illustrations for "TAMUHACK" and "2020" in the theme can be seen below while the rest of the website followed with bold lines and an offset color fill. We used a color palette consisting of brighter versions of our main colors, blue and pink, with purple as an additional accent color.
To clearly show the purpose of the social media post on first glance, I used items that symbolize the roles: a lightbulb for mentorship and a nametag for volunteering.
Another thing I designed was the vertical banners we had in the front of the stage during the event. I took inspiration from last year's banners and redesigned them in a style fitting for the theme. The bold lines also lended itself to a nice social media filter.
Finally I worked with Grace on the t-shirt design. We wanted a chest graphic and originally had a badge-like design. I proposed a graphic more inspired by building blocks to emphasize the isometric design and make use of the shading.
