─ Case study · Web · Print · Social Media · CleanTech

Urban Future Lab @ NYU Tandon — designing a competition that feels as big as its $50K prize.

My role

Print & Web Designer

Timeline

2017 – 2018

Platform

Web (Square Space)

Team

Content Team

Jump To: Case Study – Branding & Visuals

1. About

What is Urban Future Lab?

The Urban Future Lab is NYU Tandon’s premier innovation hub for smart cities, clean energy, and sustainable urban infrastructure, and home to ACRE, New York’s longest-running climatetech incubator. Every year, they host the Urban Future Prize Competition: a prestigious summit bringing the world’s most revolutionary cleantech entrepreneurs together with mission-driven investors, policy leaders, and corporate sponsors for a shot at a $50,000 cash prize and admission into the ACRE incubator. I was brought in to design everything the competition needed — web, print, social, and physical.

The brief

"Design the competition website, event brochure, social media assets, postcards, and winner checks, for a prestigious cleantech summit in New York City."

2. Four audiences, one brand

Three very different people, one consistent brand moment.

Startup founders

Cleantech entrepreneurs competing for $50K and ACRE incubator access. Need the competition to feel prestigious.

Investors & sponsors

Mission-driven investors and corporate sponsors evaluating deal flow. Need credibility and rigor in the brand.

Summit attendees

Industry leaders, academics, and press at a high-profile NYC event. Every printed piece needs to feel intentional.

3. The process

Fast, focused, and built for a hard deadline.

Brief

Mapping deliverables across the full event timeline

Understood all deliverables from web launch through day-of materials. Studied UFL’s existing brand and defined where the competition needed its own visual identity within it.

Web

Website design and build — Squarespace + custom CSS

Designed the competition site and built it in Squarespace with custom CSS throughout — pushing well past the platform’s default styling to match the design goals precisely.

Print

Brochure, postcards, and winner checks

Designed the event brochure listing the agenda, all judges, and every competing startup. Then the postcards and oversized winner checks — pieces that had to look sharp under press cameras.

Social

Social media card system

Designed social cards for pre-event promotion and live coverage — consistent with web and print so every touchpoint felt like one campaign.

5. Outcomes

The competition, brought to life.

$50K

Prize awarded at the NYC summit, presented with checks I designed

4 pieces

Deliverables across web, print, social, and physical — all consistent, all on deadline