Elizabeth Zhou

☁️

Product designer based in San Francisco.

Currently designing autonomous tools at Applied Intuition.

Doing some spring cleaning on my portfolio, but let’s be in touch!

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🖍 Reach, Grow, Build / Innovative Design RGB 2018

Event Planning

Reach, Grow, Build (RGB) is a design speaker series that I co-planned and organized on behalf of Innovative Design, UC Berkeley’s creative agency providing pro-bono services and design education resources.

Due to the fact that UC Berkeley does not have a design program of its own, Innovative Design strives to be a resource for those interested in getting more involved with design through offering student-led classes, workshops, and events such as RGB. RGB is an annual speaker series that invites industry designers to give keynotes, lead workshops, and meet curious and passionate students eager to learn and build themselves professionally.

Since Innovative Design has been hosting RGB for quite a few years now, my co Mei Mei and I wanted our RGB to stand out from the rest and be a unique experience for both the speakers and attendees. Many of our attendees come from non-design backgrounds, so it was important to find a way to engage and connect people from all different backgrounds. Therefore, we decided to go with the theme of “embracing your roots”, where speeches and workshops would explore the unique backgrounds of our speakers and celebrate diversity.

We brought together a panel of industry designers from Adobe, Palantir, and more who shared their stories with our community. There were 4 keynotes in total — Ash Huang (Adobe), Wayne Spiegel (Palantir), Briana Hokanson (Adobe), and Bingrui Tang (MemSQL) — who all gave insightful talks about how they got to where they are today and the challenges they faced along the way. We also had three workshops, Storytelling with Photos/Layout by Kevin Lee (Facebook), Critique, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Life by David Xie (Innovative Design), and Intro to Gamestorming by Andre Tacuyan (Essential), where attendees got to participate in hands-on activities with one another.

Overall, the event ran smoothly and it was rewarding to hear from some attendees that it opened their eyes to what opportunities are out there in design and that designers come in many shapes and forms, each with their own unique story to share. I found that many students who wanted to pursue a future career in design felt intimidated and believed they weren’t good enough, but after attending RGB, they realized that one doesn’t have to go to design school or get an art degree in order to become a designer — what matters is that they have the passion and drive to learn, create, and continue improving themselves.

I’m so glad to have been a part of an event that has made an impact on people’s lives, and helped bring design education and awareness to the Berkeley community. The most important thing that I’ve learned is that it really does take an entire team to plan and execute a day-long event for 80+ attendees. I definitely could not have done this without my co Mei Mei and the rest of the officer board at Innovative Design who supported us every step of the way, including the internal Marketing team that created and designed all the collateral for the event!

A huge kudos and thank you to the speakers as well who generously volunteered their time to share their knowledge and love for the field with us.

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