I was the director of design for Bitcamp 2017. Bitcamp is the largest hackathon at University of Maryland, and aims to provide a friendly and creative atmosphere that encourages exploration. I designed the website, which was aimed at potential participants, and we wanted it to evoke the campfire atmosphere that differentiates it from other hackathons while showing that the organizers of the event are also people who love to code and make things.
Our final site used a background with a picture of a landscape that cycled through day, night, and back to day as the user scrolled. The picture evokes the emotions of a camp, the time cycling demonstrates that the event is overnight, and the animation is a slightly flashy technical aspect that indicates that we’re tech-loving people without distracting from the content.
I came up with this concept, did the layout (except for some parts added by the development team) and animation, and art directed the actual background art. I then developed the background art into a motif used for all the rest of the promotional materials of the event. This was primarily a graphic design project of making a visual representation of the event that fit into the existing style guide, but also required some UX thinking to figure out a way to create an animation that wouldn’t distract from the content but would deliver our message in an experiential way.
