Project Brief
I was approached by the engineering team to help create a poster that would go up in the office to promote our Summer Hack-A-Thon event. This event was intended to bring together employees from various disciplines together to work on new innovative ideas for our company. I was concerned that employees in non-coding disciplines would feel unmotivated, so I was hoping to find a way to make their engagement feel wanted through the poster designs. After the posters were done I was also asked to create t-shirt designs and a trophy design so I aimed to keep them all under one visual identity.
I was the lead designer for all parts of this project. I collaborated with the engineers who were coordinating this event for feedback.
Sketches
First I just tried creating a few concepts that might address the issue of cross-disciplinary mingling. Starting with the posters I tried a few of these concepts from my sketchbook. As that evolved I let it set the concept and mood for the t-shirts and trophy designs.
![sketchbook](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/65812398a70717a189ba25b9_hackathon-01-sketches.png)
Iterations
The posters started with a few broad ideas, and then we narrowed to one or two we liked. I continued working on variations of the chosen ideas and tested them in a few different ways to refine the design into something effective for print.
![poster design iterations](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/658123b5610ff1f0fad3b54b_hackathon-02-iteration-01.png)
![poster design iterations](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/658123c12799786542d38b1a_hackathon-03-iteration-02.png)
![poster design iterations](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/658123ca21862a981f7d140f_hackathon-04-iteration-03.png)
I started really bold with the t-shirt designs—adding repeated text all over in different colors. Once we got the printing estimate I had to go back and heavily reduce the design.
![t-shirt design iterations](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/658123ebb4f818e3670f0fc0_hackathon-05-iteration-04.png)
Final Logo Design
Here's the final poster and t-shirt designs that were used for the event. From the poster designs emerged a visual mark that I ended up using across all the different components of the project, much like a logo. Each small-text work came from the different themes we were trying to encourage participants to explore during the event.
![final logo design](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/658123f823e0ec649f14fe7a_hackathon-06-final-01.png)
Final Poster and T-Shirt Designs
![final poster and t-shirt designs](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/6581240223e0ec649f15038e_hackathon-07-final-02.png)
![poster, trophy, and t-shirts on display](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/6581241e632d5c15090a72ed_hackathon-08-final-03.png)
![contestants wearing the hack-a-thon t-shirts](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656a2ef5f1342e494d73e34e/6581242ca05b9703584f5fdf_hackathon-09-final-04.png)
Conclusion
The posters were used as a way to promote the event. Employees could use the QR code on the poster to submit their ideas for the Hack-a-thon. Most employees wore their t-shirts during and even after the event, and the winning team was delighted to get their trophy!
![Portrait of Jacob McAdam looking into the distance with cubes of light behind him.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/656269160c4cc472bab6e273/66723ac04d4fe62124e3360d_jrm-design-headshot-4-sm.jpg)