OVERVIEW
Timeline
2 months, November 2023 – January 2024
Team
1 Design Mentee, 2 Marketing Leads
Contributions
Design System Development, Brand Style Guide, Graphic Design
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Google Drive Suite
Role & Impact
Developed a design system and central library of premade reusable templates, assets, colour palettes and text styles. This drove a 90% reduction in incorrect colour and typography usage, and consistent visual language across 100+ digital assets for the club's social and organizational channels.
Implemented use of Google Forms and Sheets, for tracking and managing design requests across the executive team, which is still part of the design workflow. Taught design mentee and two marketing leads how to use Figma in 1:1 or 1:3 online meetings.
SO, WHAT IS GDSC?
Google Developer Student Club (GDSC) is an official program by Google that establishes university-based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies like Android development, Google Cloud, Machine Learning, and more. These clubs provide a platform for students to learn, build, and grow their skills in a peer-to-peer learning and networking environments. At GDSC Simon Fraser University (SFU), we bring together students from different academic disciplines and levels of coding experience who all want to explore and expand their technical skills.
PROBLEM — Lack of Design Knowledge, Assets & Guidelines
Before I joined GDSC SFU, the club had no central library of assets, consistency across channels, nor design platform for members of the design team to work collaboratively. Additionally, existing visual content did not adhere to GDSC brand guidelines due to lack of knowledge and inexperience using design software.
The graphics being posted across the club's social channels and printed as posters for on-campus marketing lacked cohesion, and at times, even lacked the Simon Fraser University chapter tag entirely (see below).
SOLUTION — Identify Core GDSC Branding & Build Library
Graphic for a GDSC 2023 Winter Social, which took the scrapbook & sticker branding and substituted the usual tech-related sticker contents to fit the theme of the event. All colours in frame are from the library's Colour Styles.
Colour Palette turned into Figma Colour Styles for ease of use and consistency across branded assets.
Case study in progress.
REFLECTION
DISCLAIMER
As of September 2024, Google has rebranded GDSCs into subgroups of Google Developer Groups (GDGs) on campuses, aligning the student-focused community with the broader GDG network. The unexpected transition came with rebranding of the GDSC kit to align with GDG brand guidelines, so the solutions I provided are only accurate to GDSC and not GDG on Campus. However, the club is continuing to use the design library I handed off.