THE <WIT> PROJECT

WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED

The goal was to create a distinct and memorable brand that was appealing to young women, while maintaining a high level of professionalism in order to establish trust and credibility in a non-profit audience. And to realize a website that would drive participation and partnerships with these key audiences.

strategy & creative direction

By conducting a peer audit of this space, I quickly realized that most women-in-tech initiatives focused on the student’s career development — but not the change the student wanted to make in the world.

The strategy thus focused on the high level purpose of the organization: to make tech a more equitable place for women, people of color as well as for non-profits. The key message “Embed women into tech. Embed tech into non-profits” emerged.

I then came up with 3 brand concepts — each representing the idea of embedding women into technology in a different way.

Shy and Jules were most excited about the direction that uses key symbols from coding languages like HTML and PYTHON as a graphic style. The muted color palette stands out across the bold pinks or conservative B&W used by similar organizations working in this space. The image direction emphasizes women at work — focused on their individual effort, but in a group setting. We chose not to call out “women-in-tech” in the logo. Rather, the word “wit” calls attention to the often unrecognized creativity that goes into software development.

web design & copy

Equipped with a vibrant new creative direction, I began to outline how the brand would come to life on a website. The goal was to create a clean interface that would communicate the purpose of the <wit> project, while fulfilling the functional need to drive students and non-profit participation.

I created wireframes to outline the structure of the website, thinking about the user journey and the actions we wanted our audience to take. I then designed the agreed upon pages based on our brand identity. After presenting the final pages, I implemented the designs onto Squarespace. The result was a fully functional website, check it out here: www.thewitproject.com

social media

Currently I am developing the <wit> project’s social media presence, with an emphasis on Instagram. We’ve aligned on a post guide and content schedule, and brought in an intern to assist with community outreach. We plan to use this channel to reach female-identifying engineers who are keen to work on world-changing initiatives.