>OCT 2024 - JULY 2025
(hack the 6ix)
Branding Toronto’s largest summer hackathon
\branding, social media, print, merchandise
↳ ROLE
Graphic Designer
↳ TEAM
1 graphic Design lead
2 graphic design execs
↳ Audience
400+ highschool and post secondary hackers
↳ TIMELINE
9 months
↳ TOOLS
Figma
illustratorProcreate
Overview
Hack the 6ix, Toronto’s largest summer hackathon with 400+ participants, needed a new theme to guide its 36-hour
2025 event.
As a design executive on the graphics team, I collaborated with two other designers to shape this year’s branding.
I also worked closely with other teams, e.g. marketing, operations, business development and web, to fulfill their design requests.
outcomes
Developing an RPG theme set us apart from other hackathons and we could incorporate interaction and storytelling.
Many hackers also share a passion for gaming, so this theme resonated strongly.
Deliverables included the social media feed, T-shirts, lanyards, stickers, signage, tote bags, badges, slideshows, and PDF sponsor packages.
iMPACT
I received positive feedback from participants and guests before and during the event, strengthening overall
event sentiment.
By building a clear and consistent system, we improved efficiency and could make on-brand changes quickly.
Even non-design team members, such as business development, could confidently design on-brand items.
Deliverables
Lanyards and Nametags
TShirts
Totebags
stickers
photobooth
Social media
wayfinding
Challenges
Developing a theme that resonated with hackers
from diverse backgrounds
and interests.
This was a huge issue with the characters I designed.
While applying, hackers could choose a character to represent them.
After collecting feedback from our audience, they voiced that the original versions were too feminine, making it hard for the audience to resonate with the character.
I sought to make the characters more androgenous by changing its shapes and colours.
These character designs evolved from hacker feedback.
Maintaining consistency in pixel size, lighting, and color palette across all assets.
We built the RPG theme around five distinct environments (and later expanded it). This meant creating assets for
each one.
To streamline collaboration, I introduced a helpful Figma plugin and created a style guide beforehand.
I ensured the assets matched both our branding and the team’s work, while keeping scalability in mind, whether they appeared on signage, social media, or merchandise.
Final list of assets I’ve designed.
early stage Pixel Size + shading exploration.
Adapting our pixel-art style
to strict manufacturing constraints while extending
our theme’s story.
Across all merchandise, I extended the branding and story to keep things fun, interactive, and to avoid repetition.
For example, the tote bag had to use just one colour with thick lines and minimal detail; difficult for a style that relies on shading and colour.
After the design was finalized, the manufacturer suddenly changed, allowing for more colours and detail. I quickly iterated on the design and improved it under tight timelines.
First iteration, full colour.
Hit my first technical limitation: Our supplier was screenprinting the bags, meaning I had to remove detail and could only use two colours. I first made it black and white to check clarity.
Attempting colour. Although the green and brown matched our 2025 theme more, the pairing lacked contrast, opting me to go for Hack the 6ix’s overall brand colours, one of which being teal.
After iterating on the previous designs, our operations team changed suppliers allowing me to return back to my first draft. Having the choice of colour helped me add more dimension to the design and I was able to include more details. Though, many of the elements were simplified and enlarged so that things like our logo, could be easily identified.
(Tote Bag Design Process)