Software: Adobe Illustrator, Figma
Overview
Every year, WISE, the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship, hosts an annual summit that provides students with the opportunity to learn and network with industry professionals in order to expand their entrepreneurship interests and skills. For the 2024-2025 academic year, I served as the Design Associate on the WISE Summit team, helping to bring our chosen theme to life with a self-developed brand and design assets. These assets were both print and digital, including social media posts, reprographics/signage, themed slide decks, merch, a Summit website, and more.
This year, our theme was ‘Built to Last’. As a team, when thinking about what entrepreneurship meant to us, we all agreed that one of the most important aspects of success is a strong foundation. By focusing on sustainability in our personal journeys, emphasizing longevity in our careers, and defining success on our own terms, we will hopefully develop a long-lasting and balanced approach to life that is Built to Last.
Brand development
Once we decided on the theme, I worked closely with the Design Director to develop a brand that we would use to design all Summit assets for the year. In brainstorming theme ideas, the Design Director and I wanted it to feel bright, modern, clean, and bold. We also wanted to ensure this year’s theme differed from previous years’ to solidify a unique brand identity for the 2025 Summit that would make it stand out.
Our final brand book emphasizes courage, growth, and sustainability in its type, colors, and design elements to reflect the ‘Built to Last’ theme.
Built to Last theme
Brand book
As shown in the brand book, a recurring motif in this year’s branding is the small upward arrow.
This arrow is meant to signify a continual movement upwards, referencing the theme’s emphasis on sustainability, growth, and preservation.
Social media
In order to promote Summit, the creative team relied on Instagram posts and stories (and occasionally LinkedIn) to generate excitement about the conference. The Instagram posts pulled on the self-developed brand the design team had created in order to solidify the Summit’s identity, and the Director of Marketing played a key role in generating a posting timeline and outreach schedule.
When creating Instagram posts, I collaborated heavily with the Design Director and Head of Summit to ensure posts embodied a certain aesthetic and aligned with the brand. As the person with the least design experience on the creative team, this was super helpful in allowing me to grow as a designer.
Most of the Instagram posts I designed were created in Adobe Illustrator, with some design elements created in Figma. Some of the posts I helped design are included below, as well as the final feed in its entirety.
My designs
Full Instagram feed
Full Instagram feed video
Signage/day-of assets
Part of my responsibilities included designing day-of assets, including signage. Some examples of this included signs for speaker events, conference schedule, sponsor thank you’s, marketplace vendor stations, and podium branding decor. In addition to day-of signage, the design team created posters and A-frame hanging signs to be placed around campus in the weeks leading up to the event. Signs were made of different materials (ex: foamcore, glossy paper, vinyl banners, etc.) and were different sizes depending on the type of sign needed. All signs were printed in CMYK due to requirements by our on-campus reprographics office. Some of the signs I designed are included below.
Day-of reprographics also included Summit programs and table topic cards. Day-of digital assets included Summit-branded slide decks for each workshop/keynote session.
Speaker workshop foamcores
Table topic cards
Merch
Another important part of the Summit experience is merch. I worked with the Design Director to design a few pieces of Summit swag to be included in our swag bags to attendees, including Summit pens, lanyards, notebooks, stickers, tote bags, sweatshirts, t-shirts, and more.
Summit lanyards, pens, and stickers
Summit notebook and tote bag
Summit t-shirt
Summit sweatshirt
Website
The Summit design team also oversees updates to the Summit website to reflect the new theme each year. This year, website updates were led by the Design Director using Webflow.
The website for the ‘Built to Last’ theme is shown below.
Homepage
Schedule page
About page
Speakers page
Contact page
Event photos
Photos taken by Helen Cai (@hcaiphotography)
Reflection
This project was the culmination of 10 months of hard work and collaboration by the WISE Summit team and, as such, was the longest design project I have gotten the chance to work on. This role not only allowed me to expand my design skills and processes as we built a brand from the ground up, but also pushed me to grow as a student leader and teammate in one of my most valuable student experiences yet. I learned a lot not only about design, but about event planning, logistics, and operations (namely, how to organize and run an event with over 250 attendees over the course of a nine-hour day) as well as speaker outreach, fundraising, and marketing.
Prior to this project, I had never been tasked with building such a thorough brand from scratch, and I found that I often struggled to come up with fresh ideas that incorporated our brand elements in unique ways. Each Summit team before us created slightly different designs for the same type of design asks, and that expectation carried over to our team as well, making the path unclear at times. With this in mind, collaboration with the creative team was immensely helpful as they guided me in iterations/edits to achieve our goals. I also had little experience in graphic design before taking on this role (I had mainly worked in interaction design), which meant I had to learn entirely new tools and softwares to create the assets we needed. While this lack of prior experience made the role challenging, it also allowed me to try new things and strengthen my design thinking. This growth mindset has carried over to projects outside of Summit, and I am grateful this experience sparked that internal growth.
Overall, I am immensely proud of the conference that I was able to create with this team. Alongside the Design Director, I was able to help develop an internal brand that was used to create 50+ digital and print designs, solidifying a recognizable presence for WISE Summit on Northeastern’s campus and across Boston to help make this event a success. I absolutely loved working on this team over the course of the year, and am proud of the progress I was able to make as a designer, student leader, and teammate.