After doing graphic design for Hack Harvard College in its first year, I was determined to reimagine the brand for the annual hackathon for the years to come.
I took on the challenge on my own over the course of the summer, building the brand from the ground up and developing the ideas of the hackathon in terms of its overall mission, type, color scheme, and visual identity.
MISSION
Through discussions with the HackHarvard team, we knew that we wanted to build the hackathon around some central theme, as had been done in the previous year. The rest of the HackHarvard team and I had a couple discussions around what we might focus on over the course of the planning phase of the hackathon. In short, we took inspiration from the juxtaposition of the our almost 400 year old campus and the forward-moving nature of the work that we were doing to define a simple, concrete theme: Classic vs Future, or Hack the Past. This juxtaposition became useful in visual elements created later on.
More on the mission of this year's hackathon on our Medium: https://medium.com/@hackharvard/hello-world-its-time-to-hack-the-past-55665631d475#.dpw0ksy41.
COLOR SCHEME
This was a relatively simple choice -- given that we ARE a Harvard hackathon, we had to have some red in there somewhere. I settled for something more high-energy than the typical varsity red, and paired it with a color that would make for a subtly fiery gradient. I matched these two with complementary blues and greens that would be used sparingly for actionable buttons, important/highlighted elements, etc.
LOGO
Of course, the next step was to create the logo -- the new face of the HackHarvard brand. While there would normally be a concern with consumers/hackers readjusting to the new logo, I felt comfortable with exploring new options because of how young the hackathon was a the time, as well as the lack of deeper branding beyond the logo in the past year.
This was the old logo:
The old HackHarvard logo, used in the 2015 inaugural hackathon. Good, but could be better.
I started with a number of drafts, with most or all of them attempting to combine the typical "H" with some element of time, usually an hourglass.
The team and I really liked the top right logo because of its simplicity and the fact that the glyph in the nook of the "h" could be changed based on the theme for the year. I decided to flesh out a new concept based on this same idea -- something smoother and, for lack of a better word, "curvier," going against the grain of most hackathon logos.
Admittedly, I accidentally fell in love with this logo.
It captured pretty much everything I wanted to get out of a new identity for HackHarvard -- something that didn't immediately scream "Harvard," but rather something completely new and sleek, and something that people would soon come to recognize as the new face for HackHarvard.
However, despite being inspired by a modular logo, I didn't want to sacrifice the symmetry that was achieved in the new logo. As such, I decided to work with backdrops that could be modified to carry the message of whichever theme would be central to the year's hackathon. With that in mind, I created a backdrop with a clock in the background to represent the new theme, as well as a generic backdrop to be used in other more general settings.
TYPEFACE
With the logo finally set, I set upon choosing the typefaces that would represent the brand. I set upon some of the typical web typefaces I jump to for this kind of work:
...but I found that none of them really fit what I was looking for. I decided that, at least for the first things that people would see, I wanted it to be big and bold -- while the logo should take up space, the logotype should be able to stand by itself and represent the brand adequately. As such, I settled on Exo (Ultra) as a suitable typeface for logos and headings.
For the logotype, I decided that "hacking" was more important than "Harvard" in this case -- after all, a hackathon is much more about the people attending it. Also, the alignment worked out nicely that way. The end result was a powerful logotype that could stand independently of the logo itself.
For the body font, I chose a typeface that was simple and clean -- Lato (Light), a font I knew particularly because of Slack. The combination of this and the headings can be seen below:
With all of that settled, we moved into creating the face of our website. I made a few basic mockups, but for the most part, I worked directly with our awesome developer to bring those concepts to life, allowing the designs to grow with the work we were doing.
One of the key ways we chose to communicate the theme of the year was through the juxtaposition of photos with our vector graphics, hence capturing the idea of both past and present/future.
One of the key ways we chose to communicate the theme of the year was through the juxtaposition of photos with our vector graphics, hence capturing the idea of both past and present/future.
I worked with some absolutely fantastic new designers to bring the brand to life over the course of the months prior to HackHarvard 2016, and their work can be found in a ton of the materials at the hackathon, from the banners to the signs found throughout the venue.
