Designing marketing materials for Youth Empowerment Society - DesignFest 2025
We’re back! After a year's hiatus, on March 29th, I completed my 5th year as a design coach at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) annual Grassroots DesignFest sponsored by the T. Rowe Price Foundation. DesignFest is a once-a-year opportunity for local organizations to collaborate with talented student and professional designers to come up with creative solutions for the design challenges your organization is facing.
During DesignFest, designers from all over come together for an opportunity to craft solutions for nonprofits in need of design support. As a Design Coach, I am a mentor, advisor, and guide for the designers on my team. I help the designers set and achieve the design goals and help us stay on track during the event. During this year’s DesignFest, we partnered with Youth Empowerment Society.
(From left to right) Kayla, Gabriel, Karla, and Louise, the DesignFest team, with nonprofit lead, Deborah, of Youth Empowerment Society
DesignFest and the Design Sprint
DesignFest is a one-day design sprint event to help Baltimore nonprofits better communicate their identity, mission, and impact through stronger visual design – at no cost to the organization. A design sprint is a process for solving challenges through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas with real users. In this case, we showcase our design solutions with our nonprofit partners.
Design sprints prioritize the end-user and allow for diverse input, valuing the opinions of everyone present on the design team. Design sprints save time, create a clear roadmap for design solutions, and allow solutions to be tested before launch. Many nonprofits have little to no dedicated creative team members. Having a dedicated team of designers for a small time can create amazing solutions for a nonprofit. Design sprints are usually an intense 5-day process where user-centered teams tackle design problems. During Designfest, we complete the design sprint process in 1-day.
What are the design sprint steps?
Understand - Map out the problem and define the area of focus.
Ideate - What are possible solutions?
Decide - Which solution will we test?
Prototype - Design and build a realistic solution.
Test - Get feedback from nonprofit partners.
Designfest 2025
Nonprofit Assignment:
North Star Challenge: Create accessible branding guidelines and new marketing materials.
Team:
Kayla Moore
Karla Lazarte
Louise Griffin
Gabriel Carter
Understanding the nonprofits’ needs
Youth Empowered Society (YES) is a nonprofit working to prevent and eliminate youth homelessness in Baltimore. After meeting with our nonprofit organization, our team was ready to support Youth Empowered Society by creating marketing material that clearly articulated their services. First, we collected inspiration and discussed which deliverables would be best to create during this session. We also ideated on potential logo redesigns. We then created the logo designs, posters, a business card design, brochure design, and social posts with affirmative messages aligned with the organization's mission and values. We also researched additional marketing items, a large banner and a keychain. We used Canva, an accessible design platform, to give YES easy access to edit and manage the designs after the event.
Ideate
Design inspiration collected on a Milanote Board
Decide
Prototype
Test
Our team shares our final designs with our nonprofit lead
Our team explains the rationale behind design decisions
Results
Youth Empowerment Society poster mockups
Youth Empowerment Society social media mockup
DesignFest provides an opportunity to connect with local designers, put my design and leadership skills to the test, and provide design support to a local organization in need. It’s always a fun time and I am looking forward to next year!
