Background

Lead with Pride and Lead with Pride: Executive Jumpstart are annual leadership conferences for LGBTQ+ students at the University of Toronto. Lead with Pridebegan in 2009 as an opportunity for student leaders to gain skills to make a positive impact at U of T and beyond. Today, the conference has grown to be a series that is aimed at supporting current student leaders, as well as expanding and diversifying LGBTQ+ student leadership on all three campuses.

The goals of Lead with Pride are to provide students with the opportunity to engage in vital conversations around LGBTQ+ leadership; develop an understanding of anti-oppression work; practice self-care; and learn tangible, hands-on skills to support student organizing and leadership.

The Lead With Pride co-chairs asked me to design a logo in time for their sixth annual Lead with Pride: Executive Jumpstart conference. The logo was also used for the Lead With Pride February conference.

The Process

1. The Brief

I started by having conversations with the co-chairs about the values and principles they wanted to emphasize this year, and any aesthetic direction they had in mind.

Key concepts:

• Inner strength
• Transferable skills
• Succeeding in queer spaces and outside
• Networking - meeting people, connecting
• Community contributes to individual and vice versa

Key aesthetic traits:

• Bold
• Fun
• Professional
• Queer (purple/pink/rainbow)

2. Moodboards + Colors

Firstly, I reminded the clients of imagery ideas they had brought up in conversation, and presented a collection of existing conference logos for context.

Then, I offered 2 options for aesthetic directions

1. Curvy hand-lettering: more fun and playful.
2. Modern & Bold: Geometric in nature - more professional but can be made fun by use of bold, saturated colors.

I presented 2 options for color palettes:

1. Lively Rainbow: bright, neon, from a range of hues - based on the visual relationship between rainbows and queerness.
2. Bi lighting: Bisexual colors - based on the modern trend of bisexual lighting used in film and television.

3. Sketches

4. Final Options