During the 2019 fall semester, our practicum class took on partnering with a national organization for the first time. We are currently working with the Consortium for Computing Sciences In Colleges (CCSC) to develop their national main branding and regional sub-brand visual identity, redesign their national and regional websites, as well as convention materials. 

Our team composed of Vinnie Carroselli, Hunter Winters, Deija Danhi, and myself, Caitlyn Konradt, has been working for weeks to create these deliverables for CCSC. We first began with the define phase, where we met with CCSC Eastern Regional representative John Wright to define the scope and timeline of the project, and to prioritize deliverables. We then moved on to the assess phase, where we empathized with the community partner to identify current assets. As a team, we identified their current brand, online presence, convention materials, and print materials. After we assessed CCSC’s materials, we began researching for inspiration for our new designs. We all found inspiration for their website, visual identity, color palettes, and more. After researching, we broke into smaller teams to tackle the project in an efficient way. Vinnie and myself focused on creating their new logo and branding, while Deija and Hunter focused on their website and digital presence. 

I began the sketch phase of the logo, seen above, with a developed color palette and icons for their main and branch branding. It was an entirely new process of developing branding for me. I am usually used to creating just one logo, but in this case we needed to develop multiple icons to represent different regions of CCSC. I struggled the most with creating 11 icons, simply because I was running out of ideas. I researched a bit more and found some more inspiration that I could work from to finish the icons.

Another thing I struggled with, and I think we did as a team was presenting to clients without being able to meet them and present to them in person. It was difficult to see body language and unspoken acceptance of our ideas since we were presenting through Zoom. But I think as a whole, we had a successful presentation and a pleasant time getting feedback from John and other board members after the presentation. 

We have so far been very fortunate to work with our first national organization and received a ton of positive feedback from our client so far. We presented a newly designed logo with partnering fonts, color palette and icons, convention materials, a national website mockup, and possible print materials. 

Our team is thrilled to finish this project at the end of the semester, and to hand the torch to the Spring practicum class to work on future deliverables such as implementing the national website and possible regional websites, digital banners for social media and an email list, as well as a social media posting schedule and content creation for any and all CCSC pages. 

Cait Konradt ’20

POE: Technology and Design