WISE, the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship, at Northeastern University hosts an annual summit aimed at connecting students with industry professionals to learn more about entrepreneurship. This year, I had the pleasure of being the Director of Design for the 2024 WISE Summit. Our theme, Embracing Authenticity, calls upon each of us to allow our unique identities to shape our experiences. In this role, I spearheaded the design efforts to bring the theme to life. This included brand identity, a website, social media posts, merch, signage, and more.
The main Summit website had little changes based on previous years. This year, I implemented an "About" page for users to learn more about this year's theme. In the Fall, I was asked to create a new Summit website, that would be integrated into the Spring one, that highlighted past Summits and the details of them.
Over the summer, I laid out the foundation of our website. The implementation of the "About" page provided more context about Summit which was helpful since the website didn't have as much information before. Throughout the Spring semester, I updated the site to include the most updated event details as they were announced. Check out the live website here!
Once we finalized our theme, Embracing Authenticity, I worked with my design associate to develop a new brand that captured the theme's meaning. We made it a point to differentiate this year's look from past ones and opted for a bright and colorful approach.
To promote the event, we utilized Instagram and had a regular posting schedule to bring awareness to it. Working with the Summit Creative team, I developed the Summit brand voice and built out our feed. I worked with the Director of Marketing to generate post ideas and with my design associate to brainstorm and provide feedback. Below are some of the posts I designed for our Instagram.
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For the day of the event, I designed multiple types of signage to display different parts of the event. This included speaker events, schedules, wayfinding, and more.
Throughout this project, I learned about seeing a brand all the way through. I had to think about all the different applications of the brand and think ahead to future applications as well, even if the details weren't clear. I had to develop a brand that sits under an existing one, making it different yet still connected.
This was my first time in a leadership position of this level and I learned a lot about effectively working with an associate. In my role I was able to work on giving actionable feedback, creative and strategic thinking, collaborating on tasks, facilitating learning, and other general leadership skills and best practices.