Who Gives Us Our Names?

Client
Harvard COATL

Year
2023

Location
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

A comprehensive design package for Harvard COATL’s inaugural panel. Together with the rest of Harvard COATL, a student-run Latinx organization, co-organized agenda for a student-organized panel at Harvard College on the intersections between Latinx identitities and Indigeneity. Developed, executed, and published supporting promotional materials for the panel, attended by upwards of 30 students across Harvard schools.

As the founding members of Harvard COATL, we had questions. 

We were an organization founded at Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School dedicated to exploring and honoring the link between Latin American and Indigenous identity at the intersections of language, culture, and history, and we wanted to know: “How is ethnicity is mediated, by whom, through what processes, to whose benefit?” “What makes a person or culture Indigenous?” “Are Latinx people Indigenous?” “How do we respectfully explore our roots?” These questions, and a motivation to seek expert guidance from community leaders to engage our questions at the scale of the Harvard community, are what led to our inaugural panel.

As a new organization, COATL was starting from scratch to market our event, and needed everything from a name to a visual identity to a social media presence. We needed to persuade the broader Harvard community to attend our inaugural event, prove legitimacy to program directors and financial administrators across Harvard to secure funding, and do it all within a constrained schedule: finals were fast approaching, and everyone had other projects, tests, and papers to work on.

In a brainstorming session guided by Paloma Sitalín Sanchez, the group gathered to answer questions that would inform the name, personality, and identity of the event.

“What words come to mind when we think about the ways language constructs our world?,” we asked. “Do we want the visuals to be solemn, fun, or somewhere in between?” Members were in agreement that it should be punchy and a little bit provocative, while still approachable, professional, and dignified. Finally, we asked: “What should we call the panel?” After some twenty minutes of group iteration, I blurted out: “how about Who Gives Us Our Names?” The group was quiet for a second, then a grin spread across everyone’s faces. And that was our name.

In response to the team’s limited time and bandwidth, we formed committees so each governing member could focus their energy on one or two tasks. I worked with the design feedback committee to present three identity design variations. Throughout the project, I would collaborate with funding, design feedback, social media marketing, and flyering teams to realize and disseminate the design package. 

The final deliverables included a full identity package including color palette, wordmark, typography, and visuals, a social media profile and half a dozen carousel social media posts, and two variations of full-bleed print advertising flyers.

My colleague Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato successfully advocated for sponsorship from six different Harvard centers and programs, supported by the event’s strong visual appeal. 100% of the panelists were compensated in the form of an honorarium, and we filled an existing gap in Harvard student life: dialogue that engages both Indigenous and Latinx topics. Upwards of 30 people across Harvard schools attended the panel and subsequent community dialogue, proving the desire for more spaces that meaningfully explore Indigeneity within Latinidad.

Contact

Interested in collaborating? Marisol is available for full-time and freelance work! Résumé and CV available upon request.

andmunstudio@gmail.com
LinkedIn