Cal Hacks 4.0

Cal Hacks 4.0 was the fourth iteration of Cal Hacks, the world’s largest collegiate hackathon. Throughout 2017, I created the branding for Cal Hacks 4.0 under the general guidance of a California road trip theme, in celebration of the fact that advanced and beginner hackers alike come to California from all over the world to hack with us in Berkeley.

Every iteration of Cal Hacks gets dressed in a new bear named dd0ski. dd0ski is aptly named — a DDoS is a type of hack (a Distributed Denial of Service attack, to be precise) and Oski is UC Berkeley’s mascot. I designed the Cal Hacks 4.0 dd0ski as the central component of our hackathon’s visual identity — this little guy was featured on thousands of shirts, swag bags, badges, wristbands, and more.

Cal Hacks 4.0 was marketed to tens of thousands of people around the country. We ultimately ended up hosting over 2000 participants at California Memorial Stadium. Badges, shirts, wristbands, banners, posters, maps, flyers, Snapchat filters, countdowns, decals, and more were all part of the agenda — below is a complialtion of some of the final products.

Products

Attendees consisted of hackers, volunteers, sponsors, and mentors — each of which had a different type of badge. All attendees were also given wristbands for security purposes.

The hackathon itself was 36 hours straight, filled with lots of moving boxes, distributing food, helping hackers, making sure sponsors felt at home, and hanging out with everyone who stopped by (even some four-legged friends!)

Marketing

We put in a lot of marketing effort in the months leading up to Cal Hacks, resulting in over 4000 applications from hackers around the globe. The week before the hackathon, I created some countdown graphics to post daily on our Facebook page honoring our California heritage, corporate sponsors, and hackathon fuel sponsors.

Design Implications

Designing for such a large-scale event gave me the opportunity to make design decisions affecting logistics, organization, accessibility, and more. I designed maps for venue accessibility, organized sign design & placement to optimize the hacker and sponsor check-in process, and created badge checklists to streamline snacks & meals.

These design decisions affected more than just the visual branding of the hackathon — they guided the logistics of a 2000+ person event held across five stories of a collegiate football stadium. This experience tangibly exemplifies the power of good design in organization. The hackers, sponsors, volunteers, mentors, and other attendees at Cal Hacks each have well-defined user problems that I studied and understood in order to create enjoyable physical product solutions.

Takeaways

Cal Hacks 4.0 was my first experience ideating, executing, & expanding a branding image that thousands of people interacted with. Cal Hacks is an immense part of the Berkeley CS community, so I never go a day on campus without seeing a student decked out in a 4.0 shirt or with a dd0ski sticker on their laptop. I’m very thankful to have made a lasting impact on my (and other!) university’s campus through my designs.

My experience at Cal Hacks has been predominantly defined by team collaboration. Although I am the sole designer responsible for making and implementing all design decisions, I take feedback from a wide range of my colleagues across different aspects of our organization and design for their needs. Sponsorship, logistics, tech, marketing, outreach, and more all require design assets — hence I have experience working closely with multiple teams and stakeholders to make selfless design decisions for the betterment of the entire organization. This well-positions me to create visual systems that drive the organization of a complex set of needs.

It’s also worth noting that Cal Hacks 4.0 has been the best weekend I’ve had in college so far. Nothing can really describe the feeling of actually stepping through an event that you’ve had a year in the making. Seeing students come from all of the world to a venue entirely filled with my designs was nothing short of surreal and an experience that I will always be grateful for.

And I’m even more thankful for the people that came into my life because of the superstar team that worked together to make this hackathon a record-breaking reality.