The objective of the Digifest Identity System Project is to create an identity system for Digifest, the Digital Media senior portfolio showcase held every spring semester. This is where students practice their presentation skills, networking, and potentially get hired. They get to show their best works they’ve made and make valuable connections with peers andhirers. To display the importance of this event and bring awareness to it, an identity system should be made.
For this project, it was important that I choose a concept that highlighted what Digifest really stood for in my eyes. My concept was: Digifest is an event that offers students the opportunity to showcase their art/design creations and make lasting connections and network with professionals in the digital media industry. Therefore, I wanted to incorporate elements of networking and connecting in my work by visually portraying bits and parts connecting/linking to one another to show a process or flow occurring.
From this idea of networking and connecting, I created an abstract illustration of my concept. I drafted several hand drawn drawings in my sketchbook, at first I started with completely different shapes than what I ended up with. But when I decided on the types of shapes and lines I wanted to use, I drew my final sketch in the book and replicated it on Illustrator, making sure to stick to UH brand colors. The red rectangles represented the tables that are set up at Digifest. Then, I made different colored and styled circles to represent different types of people standing around tables.i.e.: filled circles representing recruiters/hirers and empty circles representing students. I connected them to lines to show networking and connecting between people and information being passed between them. I also showed some lines connecting to other tables to create a sense of connection throughout all areas of the function and circles on those lines to show movement of people walking to other tables and spreading information from one table to another. After creating the graphic, I placed it into my InDesign file and moved things around and played with the size of the text in the lock up. Once I finally had the lock up and graphic set-in stone, I decided that section was busy enough. I made the rest of the text formatted in a simple yet easy to read way and at a distance from the lockup.
