The Problem

I was brought onto a cross-functional internal team to plan an annual company hackathon. In past years I’d been tasked with just designing a t-shirt and stickers, fun swag for the participants. But this time I volunteered to lead the internal communication and marketing efforts to get awareness and participation up. After doing a bit of digging, I came to the conclusion lack of awareness wasn’t the issue, it was lack of education about if they could or should participate.

The Solution

Create branding that felt fun and inclusive, and posters that did more than just educate.

Branding

Posters

The second was to create collateral that directly addresses concerns, but still educates in a fun way. I ended up making two sets of posters, the first set was inspired by old propaganda, starting with the line “we want you”. But then turning it on it’s head a bit and pulling different job titles from departments to show that this is a hackathon for every department, not just a select few. I customized each set of job descriptions to the area of the office they were placed so that each floor of the office could feel like the poster was made for them.

The second poster address the concern that in order to participate you had to have a “big idea”, these worked as more “general announcement” posters and were placed everywhere.