Main Icon/logo of the WLC entity
Overview
Role
Head of Graphic Design
Marketing Team Member
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Procreate
Canva
Client
Georgia Tech Women Leadership Committee
Duration
Spring 2021-Spring 2022
Background
The Women Leadership Conference is a women/student lead organization on Georgia Tech's campus. It generates sponsors, speakers, and activities all with the goal of having a conference centered around women's empowerment and education in a collegiate and academic world. During my two year stent in the organization I became lead designer and helped develop the WLC brand as a whole in addition to developing the WLC 2021 conference's marketing and branding.
Mission Statement
Developed for women by women, WLC focuses on the goal of giving women voices in the collegiate space. For the annual conference it brings in speakers all at the top of their respective industries to help advise and inspire attendees in the form of workshops and mini classes. For the 2021 session, WLC gathered leaders from all over the united states to participate in the conference. Sourcing speakers such as Blair Imani, the central theme of the conference was intersectionality - with the goal of fostering intersectional feminism and community.
Graphic Design
Main Icon/logo of the WLC entity
Main Iconography for 2021 Conference
Overarching Design vs. 2021 Conference Design
An interesting aspect and challenge of this design was creating a logo to be long-lasting and to represent the brand of WLC as a whole, while also developing variations of it for the 2021 conference. For the formal icon/logo, cool tones of grey blue were chosen to offset the black icon. In order to make the 2021 iconography different enough but still have a clear visual connection to the main logo, the face icon was expanded on and colored to reflect the bright color scheme of the 2021 branding.
Mood Boarding and Research
Pulling inspiration from other women artists and images uplifting women. I gravitated towards the idea of an image all women could see themselves celebrated in. On that was distinctly feminine but without any specific phenotypic features. This idea, born of mood boarding and researching intersectionality gave life to the icon for the logo. Additionally women like Audre Lorde (who's quote is shown in the graphic), who champion intersectionality greatly inspired my designs for WLC.
Color Scheme and Graphic Elements
The blue grey color scheme of the overarching WLC brand reflects the fluidity of the organization while maintaining a professional persona. In contrast, the colorful shades of the 2021 Conference showcase the bright, fresh ideas of a new generation of women. The additional graphics reflect this emergence of new thought and ideas- showing the dynamic nature of the working woman. These colors and fluid lines are consistent motifs in the social media design as well as the program design.
Iteration of Logo Design
Before landing on the final design for the WLC logo, I went through a number of different variations. Some aspects of these other logo designs were later repurposed in different ways including social media posts and swag for the conference. Many of the logo iterations were too convoluted or wouldn't be able to be resized easily. However, this project helped teach me the necessity of high fidelity drafts. Often non designers have a difficult time envisioning a final product when presented with just sketches or mood boards.
Social Media Graphics
Designing for Social Media
Once we made the decision to host the 2021 conference online, social media marketing became one of the most important tasks for the committee members. At the time, other (physical) ways of marketing were impossible as the pandemic had reached its climax.
This meant that posts needed to be eye catching, evocative, and easy to read. Contrast and Color became the focus of the post designs. Alternating color with images and including funky, different fonts were just a few of the design strategies I employed.
Conference Program Design
A Program for a Virtual Conference
Because the program would be the central point of instruction for the attendees of the conference, it needed to be both interactive and informative. Layout was thusly important. I used Adobe InDesign and Illustration to construct the design as well as make the table of contents and other various links interactive.
For the program I worked closely with the co-leaders of WLC. It went though a number of edits including font choices and content placement.
Reflections
My Musings
I really enjoyed working with WLC, truly a team effort- the conference could not have happened without the efforts of every single person involved. It helped me develop leadership abilities and become that much more adaptable in regards to problem solving. If I could continue the design, I would redesign the website to reflect more of the new branding, in addition to developing style guidelines for the organization.