The Designs

A common factor of all our activities at the association was that they needed to be promoted via physical posters. Here is where I started specialising in catching the people's eye via colourful yet informative visual material (both physical and virtual).

Content

Usually, each element of design would consist of:

1. A title displaying the name of the activity
2. A location and a place
3. A date and a time
4. Logos of all the participating entities (such as the University and the Computer Science school)

Logos were particularly tricky to fit in one single row (how I liked to keep the layout) as their number increased, but overall I think I succeeded at the challenge! Many of them had a minimum size requirement, either set by the belonging entity or by its design, as some lost visibility of the fonts when shrank too far.

Main figures

Throughout the posters you'll be able to observe a unique central element (either literally centred or acting as a main element, even when stretched to the borders) that illustrates the carried out activity.

I am a big fan of using (multiple) symbols or elements that are tightly related to the matter and link them together by their semantics. For instance, you will see right below a webinar given by Peter Norvig, from Google, where the term "AI" has been depicted by adding common symbols of intelligence or logic, such as a Rubik's cube, chess pieces and robots.

In other designs the logo itself or portions of it (mainly the circles) are greatly present. In those cases, it means the activity is entirely dedicated to the association, for example, gatherings to attract new members or to promote our activities in a more detailed manner.

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Logos

During the first days we were used to a simple ACM logo that the mother association provided for each chapter. The designer at that time made some modifications to it, and I inherited that result and it style the moment I joined the team.

As a (very) junior designer, I picked up

Our aim was to bring together people from our Computer Science school through interesting facts, challenges and, workshops. This was the first thing I reflected on the new logo - by an addition of coloured circles, I represent the unity of our colleagues, joining us as collaborators. Their contribution was the key to our success, but the amount of time and energy we could demand could vary from one person to another, which is symbolised by the size of the circles.

In order to keep a connection with the old design, the circle-diamond pattern remained present, but with a (literal) twist: The white circle that surrounded the "ACM" text became the main element of the logo, while the outer diamond became an inner shape, defined only by the circles.

Furthermore, the color scheme also includes an inheritance component, namely:

• The original blue was replaced by a softer version: Mazarine Blue #263471

Oh, but we cannot continue the story without mentioning our sister association, dedicated to support, celebrate, and advocate for the full engagement of women in tech, ACM-W.

At our association, the ACM-W Chapter's main color ended up being Murasaki Purple (#924895). We wanted to combine both logos somehow, representing a unity in the same battle supporting women in tech, which is why we combined both logos.

But there was a bit of a mismatch in the color system at first. As the blue tone was clearly darker than the purple one, a complementary hue for each of them was needed in order to balance it visually, which is why two new colours arose: A light blue for the Mazarine Blue and a dark purple for the Murasaki Purple, completing the palette in the following manner:

• Mazarine Blue - #263471
• Blue Moon - #35869b
• Murasaki Purple - #924895
• Imperial Purple - #512b5c

... and delivering a perfectly balanced result!

A mini version

After some usages of the first full logo, I noticed the "ACM" title was hardly visible. We could rely on the visual cue the circles arranged in a diamond shape were creating, but that would have been just 50% of the success. Out of this need, a set of miniature versions of the logo were born, both for light and dark backgrounds.

The whole idea of this version was having a smaller version of the original logo, however we do have a new element in the design: The overlap of the circles. The decision of laying circles on top of each other and playing with transparency was motivated by the message we initially gave to the circles coming together, the concept of coming together. When the space is reduced, the circles get even closer, representing a stronger union.

Furthermore, two specific elements were kept: The dual colours for blue and purple, and the size of the circles. The hues have been inherited in order to keep the brand consistent at first sight, while the size of the circles needs a closer look at the original logo. Just by chance (I was not really paying attention to it when I did it), the bigger circles ended up coloured in the darkest color of each hue, namely, Mazarine Blue (dark blue) and Imperial Purple (dark purple). This funny coincidence was translated to the miniatures.

For a dark background a subtle difference can be observed, and that's related to the circles opacity. The light version plays with opacity of all its elements, while the dark version keeps them completely opaque. This decision was taken in order to preserve the full visibility of the objects, as a darker background does not contrast that well with our colours.

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Promotional material

Bookmarks

At every event where we could promote ourselves, we would hand in goodies that would display our logo or even brochures that contained more info about us. But because I wanted us to stand out a bit more (and because people love free stuff), I came with the idea of designing bookmarks.

Despite being Computer Scientists and relying on online documentation, reading is still a common activity amongst humans. Why not have a field-branded bookmark for your favourite poetry book then?

For this version we decided to go for a 3 relevant female characters and another 3 relevant male characters, both from the Computer Science field. This is how Hedy Lamarr, Grace Hopper, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace, George Bool and Richard Stallman were picked.

Given the names and the pictures you might already have an idea of what is the trend of the mixture, but let me make it specific: I picked 3 female and 3 male as a symbol of equality, but if you also focus on (or if you know!) the names you might see a second trend. Ada Lovelace and George Boole both belong to the 19th Century, setting the bases of the first computers and logic. Then, Alan Turing and Hedy Lamarr made breakthrough discoveries that we still benefit of these days, besides of representing the sexuality diversity. Last, Grace Hopper and Richard Stallman also belong to a (later) 20th Century.

The back of the bookmark (not available since I do not have the designs anymore) would contain a famous quote of each character, as a reminiscence of their knowledge they passed on to us.

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