Tools for Trade Workshop: Using Graphics to Enhance Your Brand

A good image says a thousand words. Business ventures often utilize imagery and graphics to not only convey their product/service clearly, but also as a tool to establish their brand identity, ethos, and attitude. The ‘Tools for Trade’ workshop aims to help you develop clear, expressive, and aesthetically appealing business pitches and presentations through the application of simple graphic tools and guides. In this workshop we will focus on the following topics:

• How to choose a representational style for your venture
• How to maintain graphic consistency & coherence in a presentation
• General guidelines for presentation layouts
• How to use diagrams to express data and venture ideas
• Useful tools and applications for graphic design

This event is open to Keller Center entrepreneurship students. 

Nathaniel Banks is an MArch II post professional student in the School of Architecture & is the CEO and co-founder of The Crumpet Society. Nathaniel graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University’s School of architecture in 2018, wherein he was the recipient of the James A. Britton Thesis Award. During his undergraduate studies, Nathaniel received awards in multiple internal and external design competitions, including the King & King Design Competition, the Skyhive 2019 Tower Competition, and the AIANY student scholarship award.

Outside of academia, Nathaniel has extensive experience working in a variety of landscape and architectural design practices, including Chipperfield Architects, Heatherwick Studio, Grant Associates and Karakusevic Carson Architects. Independently, Nathaniel co-established a burger-oriented food blog, and operated a bespoke cake baking and decorating service prior to attending university. Currently, Nathaniel hopes to combine his knowledge of architectural design with his love of good food through a fast food venture, ‘the crumpet society’ that aims to establish a network of stores, oriented around selling the ‘crumpet’ cuisine.

Yidian Liu is an architectural designer & AIANYS scholar, currently enrolled in the MArch II Post-Professional program at Princeton University. She is also the co-founder of The Crumpet Society, a quick service food company in the USA. Prior to her studies at Princeton, Yidian practiced architecture in international architecture and landscape design offices across Europe and Asia. She worked at Lola Landscape Architects in Rotterdam, West Architecture in London, the NYC Housing Authority in New York, Vector Architects in Beijing, and Aedas in Hong Kong. She contributed to the publication of the 2016 NYC Housing Authority Design Guidelines. Yidian’s work has been exhibited in the IHA Gallery in Tokyo and Slocum Hall in Syracuse. She is also a recipient of the 2019 SkyHive award and the 2020 Keller Center eLab accelerator fund.

Yidian holds a B.Arch degree from Syracuse University where she was the recipient of the James A. Britton Thesis Award. At Princeton, Yidian is the teaching assistant for EGR201 and EGR301, where she trains the students to integrate design principles in business development.