CASE STUDY
Team Tech Challenge
Designing a three-day tech immersion program that had to feel like Deloitte and engage like a classroom
Deloitte's brand was built for boardrooms. The Team Tech Challenge asked it to work somewhere very different.
Deloitte's brand standards leave little room for interpretation — and that's by design. Every typeface, every color, every icon exists within a system that took years to build and is maintained with precision across one of the largest professional services firms in the world. The Team Tech Challenge asked that system to do something it wasn't built for: speak directly to teenagers on the verge of choosing their futures.
The constraint wasn't the problem. The constraint was the brief.
Where it started
The visual language came before the project did.
The recruitment flyer came first — deadline before the full project had been scoped. To solve it, I developed a circuit line device that bridged Deloitte's existing icon language with the program's tech theme. Clean, on-brand, specific. That visual logic became the foundation on which the rest of the program was built.
The Deck
Thirty-four slides. Three days. One cohesive experience.
The interactive tablet deck guided students through each day of the program — from opening keynotes to STEM technology deep-dives to the Team Tech Challenge competition itself. A hero lens illustration had been created specifically for the program and needed to anchor the experience without feeling like a dropped-in asset. The design challenge was building a system around it — teal icon language, circuit line connective tissue, day-by-day navigation — so the lens felt like it had always belonged there. Every decision had to hold at Deloitte's standard and land in a teenager's hands.
THE PUSH
The best thing I did on this project, I did without asking.
The hands-on exercise slides needed something the Deloitte system couldn't give them — looseness, energy, the feeling of a working session rather than a presentation. I added hand-drawn illustrations to the exercise moments: thumbnail sketches of cities, buses, drones, transit maps, laser sensors. Rough on purpose. They signaled to the students that this part was theirs. Deloitte didn't ask for them. They responded well.
Clients with tightly controlled visual identities will almost always say no to a concept described in the abstract. Sometimes you have to show them something they didn't know they wanted.
RESULT
The program ran. Deloitte came back.
The Team Tech Challenge launched across multiple US cities in Summer 2019. Deloitte returned for a second iteration — the clearest signal a client can send. Internally, the project was recognized as an example of pushing a client past where they thought their brand limits were.
MY ROLE
Art Director, Scholastic National Partnerships. Concept, design, and execution of all visual materials. Creative liaison with Deloitte brand stakeholders.
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