Design Career Fair

 
 

It all started when I joined the Design Career Fair (DCF) my 2nd year...

As I was just kicking off in my design career, I already knew I wanted to go beyond what academics could offer me. I wanted to make a difference, solve problems, and create beautiful solutions in return. And that journey began when I chose to join DCF. 

It was a very new group that started back in 2014, when our founder, Tiffany questioned," Why don't our designers have career fairs?" The ones offered by UC Davis were great, but to find a specific company to hire designer(s) was rare. Fast forward, the DCF team was born!  Ambitious design students gathered each week with their specific team to plan a full-fledged career fair.

And I was one of them. From the range of sub-teams, I decided to choose graphics and exhibition. 

In the graphics team, I was a part of a collaborative effort in forming the branding of DCF. We had only 10 weeks to make a logo, establish a branding for our team, the career fair, and meanwhile have deliverables all before Spring quarter arrived. The time when the career fair would take place. When we were creating the logo we kept in mind that this would be use for many career fairs way beyond the 2nd annual DCF. We were going to leave a legacy of not only amazing branding, but a life-long impact on the UC Davis design community.

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This was the growing progress of our DCF logo. We started off with mood boards to brainstorm ideas. 3 elements of DCF were: [ b r a c k e t s ] and the color scheme: CMYK. Brackets became the icon of the career fair as the theme was, " [ insert future here ]" and CMYK became the colors to show how bright and bold UC Davis designers are!

Each graphics members created mock-ups to show the team. Each week we would give each other critique and feedback in order to improve our progress. Eventually, after 6 weeks the logo evolved into what it is today.

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Once we had our branding in place and had approval from our lead, directors, and the team, we placed the logo into immediate use. All the other teams could move forward with their deliverables, especially exhibits, which relied on the logo and all 3 elements to create the exhibits. 

As part of the graphics team we had the option of taking on smaller projects, Emily, a team member, and I brainstormed together to create unique "Thank-You" cards for the employers for coming out in attending our 2nd annual career fair. This was a tougher project since I was only recently gaining the skills in learning how to use InDesign, Illustrator, etc. In the end it was definitely exciting to be able to see the thank you cards physically there to give to employers.

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Not only are these marketing posters a collaborative effort of the graphics team, but I also helped create the exhibits. My friend Isabel and I created the physical brackets to be used in the photo shoots. The pre-planning process was simple as we estimated the approximate dimensions that would be best for people to hold them. By working with birch plywood, wood glue/hot glue, and spray paint we made the brackets!

Before the day of the Design Career Fair, the exhibition and graphics team world's collided once more to create the last exhibit. Exhibit members proposed the idea and graphics collaborated in making an idea come to life. From the many photos from the photoshoot, we overlaid each photo in one of the CMYK colors. Later separated each into their respective letter from the logo, creating what you see. All of this was held together by huge precisely cut foam core pieced together. In the end, the efforts were definitely worth it as many people loved it!