brand
Researchers, graduate students, and industry scientists across the physical sciences and mathematics, browsing from a lab or office laptop during the workday. Job to be done: decide quickly whether this hackathon is credible and worth their time, then register / join Slack / find their nearest site. Secondary audiences: prospective site hosts and sponsors evaluating the event's legitimacy, and past participants looking up projects, awards, and papers.
The canonical information hub for the annual Open Scientific Intelligence (OSI) Hackathon for the Physical Sciences & Mathematics — formerly the LLM Hackathon for Materials Science & Chemistry (2023–2025), renamed and broadened for the October 21–22, 2026 edition to cover LLMs, agents, datasets, models, and scientific software across the physical sciences and mathematics. A hybrid, international, free event that has produced peer-reviewed publications (Digital Discovery 2023, arXiv 2024/2025). The site announces upcoming editions (next: October 21–22, 2026), archives past projects and awards under the historical name, and routes people to registration, Slack, and site locations. Success = a first-time visitor trusts the event within seconds and takes one action (join Slack / register interest).
Rigorous, energetic, communal. This is real science with hackathon energy — not a corporate SaaS launch and not a crypto-styled hackathon. The interface should evoke the visual language of chemistry itself (emission spectra, element tiles, crystal structure) rather than generic "AI" iconography. Confident and warm; the community is volunteer-run and global.
- Generic AI-startup landing pages: blue-to-cyan gradient text, glassmorphism cards, floating blurred orbs.
- Dark "hacker" hackathon sites with neon green terminals and matrix motifs.
- Editorial-magazine affectation (display serifs, italic drop caps) — this is a lab, not a broadsheet.
- Template conference sites with identical icon-card grids.
- Chemistry is the art direction. Decorative systems come from the domain: emission-spectrum line motifs, periodic-table element tiles, monospaced data labels. Never generic circuit-board/robot/sparkle AI clichés.
- Evidence first. Published papers, project counts, global sites, and real prize amounts are the persuasion; surface them concretely rather than with marketing adjectives.
- One committed color, used with conviction. Deep cobalt carries the brand (it already owns "blue"); saturated surfaces over pale gradients.
- Fast and buildable. GitHub Pages / vanilla Jekyll constraints: no build-step JS frameworks, minimal dependencies, system-fast page loads.
- The archive matters. Past editions (2023/2024/2025) are proof of longevity — design gives them dignified, browsable homes, not afterthought lists.
WCAG AA: ≥4.5:1 body text contrast, visible focus states, reduced-motion alternatives for all animation, semantic headings, keyboard-operable nav and accordions. International audience — plain English, absolute dates with time zones.