Tartan Hacks 2025
Visual/Brand System
Branding for Pittsburgh's largest Hackathon
Role
Brand Systems Designer
Timeline
Summer 2025
Tools
Figma, Adobe After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop
AT A GLANCE
Branding a Large-Scale Student Hackathon
01 Collaborative Team
Worked as part of a collaborative Team where constant feedback, critique, and iteration accelerated my growth as a designer while pushing work to a higher standard.
02 Theme-to-System
Helped translate the 2025 theme, Changing Tides, into a cohesive visual language applied consistently across merchandise, event signage, social media, and print assets.
03 Design at Scale
Designed for a high-visibility, real-world event environment, learning how brand decisions scale across tangible physical and digital touchpoints.
Context
TartanHacks 2025 is a multi-day hackathon that brings together hundreds to thousands of students, mentors, and sponsors to build and share new ideas at Carnegie Mellon University. The visual identity needed to energize a diverse, fast-moving audience while remaining flexible enough to live across months of promotion and an intense, on-site event experience. As part of the ScottyLabs Brand Team, I worked within tight timelines and evolving requirements, designing for both anticipation and real-time use, from early announcements to day-of signage and merchandise. The project demanded clarity, adaptability, and consistency, reinforcing how strong brand systems support large, dynamic events under real constraints.
01 Brand System
From theme to brand
Developing Brand System
The identity for Changing Tides was built around the interplay of maps, flowing waterforms, and organic shapes; these elements are chosen through rounds of iterations to capture the motifs of movement, transformation, and exploration. The goal was to create components that resemble modern tech aesthetic, creating a balance between whimsy and precision. From there, we developed a flexible system of visual elements, including shapes, layouts, colors, and graphic treatments, that could scale across merchandise, signage, digital platforms, and print materials.
Scalable Logotype
Typefaces
Colours
Assets
02 Reflection
Best learning experience at any student org.
Grateful for…
Working on TartanHacks 2025 was my first experience contributing to a large-scale branding project, and it became an incredible learning opportunity. Being part of ScottyLabs’ brand team gave me a front-row seat to how branding unfolds; it showed me how an entire system can shape the event experience. I learned to think about branding holistically, making sure our designs could scale seamlessly across merchandise, signage, web, and social media, while still keeping the theme Changing Tides consistent and recognizable.
Seeing the event come alive under the brand we built was especially rewarding. Especially after the weeks of meetings and iterations, seeing the final result tangible was so fulfilling. From the moment participants walked in and were greeted by the banners to the way the digital presence tied everything together, I realized how much design can set the tone, energy, and atmosphere of an event.
I’m super thankful to ScottyLabs, because I really learned the process of branding here—organization, iteration, and collaboration—and now I feel confident applying those lessons to my own personal projects. This experience not only gave me a foundation in brand design at scale, but also showed me how powerful design can be in shaping shared experiences.
