Dillo Day Music Festival

Orchestrating the Country’s Largest Student-Run Music Festival

Roles

🪄 Co-President (2023-24)

💡 Co-Director of Promotions (2022-23)

🎨 Graphic Designer (2020-22)

2023-24 Directing the festival

Dillo Day is the largest student-run music festival in the U.S., featuring renowned artists, multi-faceted programming, and a $500k+ operating budget. As co-director, I led 100+ team members across 11 committees to bring this event to life, balancing strategy, operations, and creative problem-solving.

📊 Project Management

🔗 Strategic Partnerships

💭 Communications

💰 Budget Allocations

🔎 Recruiting Talent

By the Numbers

Leadership & Team Management

Read about the experiences behind the metrics for how I practiced leadership and learned:

  • The power of ownership and clarity: Encouraging our teams to define their challenges and goals upfront unlocked new ideas and motivated them to take initiative while feeling supported

  • Process improvement as a leadership tool: Streamlining workflows, like overhauling the sponsorship billing process, empowered teams to focus on their ambitions rather than administrative bottlenecks

    • Improved attendee registration and safety by rolling out early pick-up incentives and revamped scanning workflows

    • By empowering the promotions, tech, and operations teams to collaborate on a “Know Before You Go” campaign, we reduced pre-festival congestion and informed attendees of our harm reduction resources and student intervention service

  • Partnered with third-party contractors, including corporate sponsors, artists, and vendors, to create tailored agreements that eliminated bureaucratic bottlenecks. By improving clarity in sponsorship billing, the team reduced administrative overhead and secured fallback plans to mitigate last-minute dropouts.

  • The corporate committee secured sponsors to offset expenses and created streamlined vendor packets with tailored brand presence opportunities, allowing us to send direct quotes to be covered by sponsors (reducing paperwork), as well as alleviate pressures on the promotions team by minimizing the need for custom creative assets for partnerships. Alex and I oversaw all contracts and collaborated with our corp director in the strategic shift.

    Major sponsors included Gearhead Outfitters (merchandise and mobile app), Nyx (booth, social media, and email), Off Campus Social (wristbands), RedBull (Battle of the Bands), and Coca-Cola (custom entranceway).

My co-chair, Alex Kahn, and I in front of our first-ever custom festival entrance created by Exciting Events, Inc. and sponsored by Coca-Cola.

  • Empowering the corporate committee to take ownership of their workflows led to a game-changing shift in how we billed sponsors. By asking the team to identify the most cumbersome aspects of vendor relationships, we developed a new system that allowed sponsors to directly cover vendor quotes. This streamlined process reduced administrative burden, freed up resources, and gave our team space to focus on strategic brand partnerships.

  • Historically, red tape prevented the festival from running its own merchandise, forcing reliance on third-party vendors. I initiated meetings with Northwestern finance teams to demonstrate the benefits of an independent operation, successfully removing these barriers. As a result, our promo team launched our first merchandise shop on Fourthwall, resulting in a fivefold revenue increase (visit the shop here).

  • Brought fresh energy to the festival with thoughtfully curated additions: creative spaces like Magnolia screen printing and mock archery to engage attendees, and interactive brand activations with Nyx and Sprite Chill that drew high participation with product giveaways and photo ops.

Strategy & Problem Solving

This section highlights how I tackled recurring challenges, turning systemic obstacles into opportunities for growth.

Dillo Day sponsor Nyx’s photo op, part of their brand activation that was staffed and included product handouts.

    • Maximized app downloads with the “Cabin Mate” feature, matching attendees based on music preferences (50% adoption rate)

    • Ensured accessibility for non-app users via a targeted email blast, updated website resources, and live updates on social media platforms

  • Increased the recruitment cap for the promotions team to optimize multi-platform communication, ensuring designers could adapt visuals for multiple formats while maintaining consistency

Audience Engagement

I prioritized expanding our audience’s connection to the festival through creative engagement strategies and accessible information delivery.

New this year: We sent an email blast through Mailchimp to everyone who purchased a wristband.

Still Curious? I Made This Process Map

I’m sorry. I tried to keep it concise.

2022-23 Leading the Creative Team

As Co-director of Promotions, I managed deadlines for deliverables & delegated projects to designers, strategists, and copywriters within our team of 12, leading the creation of all festival promo materials. I was responsible for reviewing and providing iterative feedback on all visual design work, with ~5 active projects at any given time.

🎨 Visual Identity

🪧 Marketing Campaigns

👁️ Providing Feedback

💻 Web UI Contributions

📨 Meeting Sponsorship Needs

“Planet Dillo”

2022-23 Brand Book co-designed with Defne Deda.

Each year, the promotions team selects a theme to excite the student body and offer an opportunity for designers to work in a new style. I co-created a brand standards guidebook with designer Defne Deda for the chosen theme: “Planet Dillo.”

  • We had just newly recruited half of our committee, and many new members had minimal experience in the Adobe Suite. To take full advantage of their skill, we aimed for an illustrative theme that allowed for asset creation in software such as Procreate. I created and curated tutorials to assist the onboarding process.

  • We changed our approach from previous years to make the brand book more instructive, and received positive feedback from vendors and Northwestern staff regarding ease of use.

ID cards designed by me and printed for crew members, vendors, and affiliates who needed any level of festival access.

Northwestern’s Student Affairs Marketing (SAM) Smart Dillo campaign won regional awards for their creative application of our branding and assets.

Merchandising

Festival Merch

  1. Negotiated profit share with apparel provider Inktank

  2. Listed 7 clothing items, launching Ink Tank’s most profitable project of the year

  3. Directed social media marketing

Crew Merch

Ensured that students working the festival would be identifiable at all times by managing the sourcing and creation of:

  1. Crew necks funded by sponsor Coca-Cola (R)

  2. T-shirts sponsored by Bumble (L)

2020-21 Creating Promo Materials

My start on Mayfest was my first introduction to graphic design software. The mentorship and community I found on this team inspired me to continue creating graphics and pursue other design hobbies in my own time.

🖊️ Adobe Illustrator

💻 Adobe Photoshop