Everything has an identity. Most things just haven't been designed yet.

Give It a Face is a 3-hour design hackathon happening live at Future of NYC Design — an official NYCxDESIGN 2026 and NYC AI Week event. You'll work in cross-functional teams of designers and developers to build something with a genuine creative identity: considered typography, deliberate color, real visual character, and functional code behind it.

This isn't a productivity hackathon. We're not looking for dashboards or CRUD apps dressed up with a UI kit. We're looking for work that has a point of view — a face — something you couldn't have made if the designer and the developer hadn't been in the same room together.

The challenge is open-ended by design. A neighborhood. A dataset. A community. A brand that doesn't exist yet. A tool for someone who's never had one. A feeling. Whatever you choose to give a face to — own it. Make it unmistakably yours.

Get started

Pick a subject that doesn't yet have a designed identity and build one — a visual identity system, an interactive experience, a generative tool, a living brand. The only rules: it must be visually considered, technically functional, and built by a team that includes both design and development thinking.

Some prompts to spark ideas — not requirements, just starting points:

• What does your block in NYC look, sound, or feel like as a visual system?
• What if an underrepresented community had a brand as strong as any Fortune 500?
• What does a dataset look like when it's actually been designed?
• What if a tool for making creative work had the visual craft of the work itself?
• What would you build if the interface could have a personality?

• Design (out of 5)
  How would you rate the overall design
• Uniqueness of Idea (out of 5)
  How would you rate the uniqueness of the idea?
• Technical Execution (out of 5)
  Does the code actually work? Is the prototype functional, stable enough to demo, and does the implementation serve the design rather than fight it?
• Storytelling & Pitch
  Did the team communicate what they built, why this subject, and why this face — clearly and compellingly in 3 minutes?