For our final project of the term, we had the opportunity to work together with Nicole from GDC. She gave us a project brief, some background of the GDC, and some pain points that she was already aware GDC had. In our research portion, I helped create a survey that went out to all of IDEA as well as IDEA alum, identifying the relationship GDC had with design students. The survey generated the results we expected – nobody was really aware of what the GDC offered and subsequently did not see any worth in paying for a membership. For this project, I teamed up with Sara and Sharleen to create an annual mentors conference that would connect students with industry professionals. I hadn’t previously done a team project in this program yet, and I am so glad that it was such a wonderful experience! Between the three of us, the work was split evenly and each member delivered wonderful results. My main role was to create the entire website and logo, as well as make some small collateral including stickers and a pin. We met up on the weekends the work together and had very good communication aomg ourselves. We started off by each bringing in two mood boards of what we wanted our project to feel like. In class, we laid out all our moodboards and discussed what we liked, what we didn’t, and what we thought would connect with our target market the most – while making us stand out from conferences that already exist. When we first met up to show each other what we worked on (during the halfway point), it was very interesting to see that everyone’s work looked like they belonged to together but, at the same time, they didn’t. This was because you could notice everyone’s personal style in their work, whether it was as subtle as their line work or the form of the objects. However, we each have critiques and advice for what we could improve on and how we could stay more consistent.
Working on this project really gave me the experience of working with a real client, creating solutions to answer the brief, and working collaboratively in a group. I would give my group a 9/10 because I believe we created a really engaging, well-thought out event that students would want to come to. The “virtual” component of it is very unique and allows GDC to connect to its members all across the country. We also established a strong visual identity for the event, and created a broad range of collateral.