Hackathons have become a very important kind of event in the tech world. They connect a lot of professionals who work in the most diverse areas to collaborate and work together on innovative ideas. Many already established companies organize this type of event to bring these people closer to their own products and platforms.

The Intel OTC design team got the challenge of designing a brand identity system for the Guadalajara edition of this hackathon, sponsored by Intel. The challenge, however, was not restricted to the Guadalajara event - we had to create a scalable, personalizable and shareable branding that could be replicated by other teams to promote their events.

Making a system that allowed for personalization by each location was the priority with this project, but so was creating a brand that was attractive to every professional that would engage with the event.

We incorporated the OpenStack symbol into the logo. The modern typeface integrates seamlessly with the symbol, that gets highlitated inside the logo. It makes it necessary to add the full OpenStack logo, as the symbol is easily recognizable for those interested.

The idea for the full composed brand was to bring something easily customized by anyone who wanted to promote a hackathon. We opted for a visual language easily recognizable by programmers, but also legible for anyone who could take interest.

We gave it a code look, and organized the information. The structure can be copied and changed by anyone that needs to without a loss of identity.

It also makes it an option to get completely rid of the structure if the organizer thinks it is not needed.

The full identity we developed for Guadalajara made full use of the color table. Our idea was to make a map of Mexico that looked like stacks that grew towards the city of Guadalajara. Making the country and city was very important, as it was the first edition in Latin America.

These graphics are also included as a style guide for future editions, although they are not part of the brand. Other editions may choose different imagery as long as they follow the Brand Guidelines.

This brand was created as an open source project, and being able to see how people use it is half of the fun: