Women Techmakers International Women's Day 2019 Summit Series 
In celebration of International Women’s Day, Google's Women Techmakers and Talent and Outreach Programs partnered to host the sixth annual Women Techmakers International Women’s Day summit series. In all, the series featured six leadership roundtables, 19 summits, and 305 meetups across 87 countries in March and April. All of the events served to acknowledge and celebrate women in the tech industry, and created a space for attendees to learn new skills, hear from industry leaders, and build community.
Event Stats
• 2,066 attendees across the 19 global summits
• 305 local meetups reaching an estimated 33,980 attendees

Social Media
• 22,800+ social media posts between January - March using #WTM19 or tagging @WomenTechmakers
• The IWD event series Twitter announcement reached 1.7 million people, received 10,000+ clicks, and had 575 engagements
Project Duration
Late-December to March

My Role
As lead graphic designer, I was responsible for the theme design & development of all creative assets for the 2019 International Women’s Day summit series supporting a team of 60+ event coordinators, program specialists, community organizers, internal & external partners as well as social media outreach and internal Google promotion. I reported directly to the lead IWD summit series project manager sitting on Google’s Talent Programs & Events team as well as two Women Techmakers program leads.
Research
I started this project as I try to start every project, with research and understanding the brief. For this project I set up a deep dive meeting with Google's TP&E project manager to dive into the weeds of what my role would encompass, expectations, and project details. I gained insight into the event, how its functioned and preformed in the past, who its focused target market is, and feedback from previous years attendees/ volunteers/ and staff. Due to the nature of the event many of the past metrics revolved around content vs. environment and design so my takeaways highlighting brand success was pulled from the events overall attendee enjoyment and experience surveys as well as social campaign data points.
During this initial meeting I was also able to ask some clarifying and informational questions including desired outcomes and goals for this year's IWD event as well as garner a general sense of project deliverables, timelines and the larger team involved.

Project Brief
Using the Women Techmakers established logo and color palette I was asked to create a new theme for the upcoming 2019 International Women’s Day summit series that encompassed strength, femininity, and empowerment in a visually abstract design, while maintaining ties to last years 2018 design. 
2018 Logo Lockup & Design Sample
2019 Logo Lockups
Type & Color
My graphic design thinking approach...
1. Understanding the brief and defining the objectives
2. Researching target market, demographics, competition, design trends, etc
3. Brainstorming ideas
4. Sketching and ideation
5. Revising top 3 ideas
6. Presenting to stakeholders
7. Revising and developing a final idea
8. Production & deliverables
Getting Started
I started gathering more information from co-workers and previous attendees through conversation and previous resources. I started getting a better sense of who we were creating this event for, why we were offering this event, what attendees were expecting to walk away with, etc.
I followed through with some competitive research to better understand what other female focused tech events were doing, their look and feel, content, etc to help me better differentiate our event to make a strong impactful experience.
I also researched current design trends and inspiration to help me solidify a bold look & feel that stood apart.
Process Work
Sample Sketches & Exploration
I started brainstorming and sketching ideas - which moved into texture experimentation and digital roughs.​​​​​​​
Concept Roughs​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Final Concepts
I continued to check in throughout the ideation stage to identify and narrow possible design solutions. After sketching and developing a series of digital roughs I chose 3 designs I felt could convey our event values in the most expressive, impactful, and adaptable ways. I presented these concepts with example assets to the IWD 2019 summit series stakeholders. Concept #3 was chosen with much excitement.
Concept #3 Continued Exploration​​​​​​​
My goal for the event was to build a flexible cohesive brand environment and inclusive experience. What that meant to me was identifying visuals and elements that in their abstract form conveyed both the key values the stakeholders desired (strength, femininity, and empowerment)but also covey a sense of openness, positive energy, and flexibility. I didn’t want anyone to feel unconsciously claustrophobic. I wanted the atmosphere to feel welcoming.
There was going to be a lot of attention grabbing activities and vendors at these events so this design theme needed to create a unified atmosphere and a cohesive design across all event assets and wayfinding. By doing this we would be developing a structured system that allowed attendees to navigate the space and find their objectives (ie. event activities) easily without overpowering their senses.
Concept #3 Final Design Samples
Final Design
The final design showcased empowerment, passion, structure, contrast, femininity, adaptability and flow through the use of the elements of design specifically color and shape. The movement of the strokes command attention and convey strength. The strokes work together to create dynamic compositions that are each unique and energizing. Being able to adapt different brush strokes and element combinations in different layouts gave me the ability to display and really express this theme in new and compelling ways. With this we created a one of a kind, immersive, and interactive experience for our attendee’s. The additional gold elements (included in most assets, but not all) added a pop of color, texture and focus. The gold helped to break up the heavy cool colors and add sophistication and femininity. Overall the end result encompassed our design goals as well as imbued adaptability, passion and fun
Production
Once the final design was approved I presented the IWD 2019 look & feel to the larger TP&E team to paint the story and meaning behind the event experience. It would be their task to reimagine their site specific event space to express our vision. This is when the larger team and I started working closely together.
I created an intuitive Google spreadsheet and organized Google drive folder structure to help support, streamline, and track design requests & assets. This removed friction and allowed things to move quite smoothly. It also made it easy for team members to access and share assets.
At this point it came down to production and identifying general requests (assets that could be used at every location) vs site specific requests (assets specific to one location). Being an international summit series many locations required adjustments in printing specs & sizing for APAC, EMEA & LATAM regions.

Assets
Over the course of this project I created over 100 different design assets including swag, badges, wayfinding, decals, internal and external online promotion, support materials, and more. Over 3000+ design files if you include NA, EMEA, APAC, LATAM specs and design theme variations.
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