Brand & Environment · Event Design
Technica, with 1000+ attendees each year, is the world's largest hackathon for underrepresent genders. Every year it runs on a theme that touches everything: the branding, the swag, how the venue feels to walk into. In 2023, I served as Design Coordinator for eight months, where my pitch was chosen as the overarching theme.
I called the proposal Create Your Reality. It built out a fantasy world, Techniria, where hackathon roles become character classes: front end is a Paladin, research is a Rogue, back end is an Archer, debugging is a Warlock. The idea was simple: take the parts of a hackathon that are already true (you have a role, you're on a team, you're exploring something new) and make them feel like part of a world instead of just a schedule.
The full deck below is what I presented: a moodboard, a color and type system, an iconography direction, personally illustrated character drafts and world building for Techniria, style guidance for how the illustration would flex across hero images, marketing posts, and merch, plus early thinking on venue and swag.
The full "Create Your Reality" theme proposal — moodboard, character classes, iconography, and swag concepts.
The branding guide, live in Figma.
Create Your Reality was selected as the 2023 theme, which meant the proposal stopped being a pitch and started being production work: nametags, signage, and the rest of the graphics that actually shipped for the event.
After my proposal was selected, the design team worked together to actually build Create Your Reality. Images marked with ⭐ are ones I made myself.
Create Your Reality carried all the way through to the official Technica website, still live at 2023.gotechnica.org: the crystal caverns, the color system, all of it.
The theme fully implemented on the live event site.
Sticker designs.
yay technica! 🎉
The following year, I was selected as Director of Diversity & Inclusion. I helped make that year's theme real by making the website and physical space accessible for all hackers. Pictured here: all of the directors from that next year's hackathon.
