“Hey, I like you. Let’s be friends!”
On January 24, 2016, Max CCA first greeted the CCA community with its three personalities, stickers, posters, red and blue. Max rapidly became friends with 1,783 CCA students, or 80% of the CCA community. We were an open platform: Nerdy Max shared events, Curious Max shared student work, and Agent Max voiced students’ opinions anonymously.
But behind Max, we kept our personal identities a secret. We didn’t want our identities to get in the way of what Max was as a platform, and each semester we debated whether or not to reveal ourselves. We had to know if Max was a good risk to take. As it turns out, it really was.
Max CCA’s Impact
- Max became popular. We received way too many Agent Max posts — 471, to be precise. It made people think that’s the only thing that Max does. We were excited to see this became the most popular tool, but it overwhelmed us sometimes, especially when the semester got busy.
- Max collaborated with faculty. One thing we really enjoyed but didn’t have time to turn into a series was #NerdyAMA. We wanted Max to provide opportunities where students can ask practitioners questions they have. We are very grateful for our first guest Tim Belonax for being open and supportive with our AMA idea.
- Max became a community platform. We were also glad to see professor Brian McMullen using Max creatively as a channel to engage his Type class with a larger audience beyond the Graphic Design program.
- Max shared work between CCA’s majors. Because CCA currently has 2 campuses — one in Oakland, one in San Francisco — it’s especially difficult to see what students in other majors and programs are up to. Many students loved the #CuriousMax posts and the student works we shared. One of them got over 100 reactions.
How it all began
In January 2015, Secret Project’s 4th design blitz started with a challenge: Develop legendary CCA swag.
(Bill) I was a participant, but I didn’t know what ‘school swag’ was, not until John told us how other schools have their sports teams and mascots. For example, the UC Berkeley bear, and the merchandise branded around it. During a brainstorm session, I saw ‘a’ as an eye in the CCA logo, and it just occurred to me that the logo could be made into a smiley face. I duplicated the ‘a’ and flipped it to the other side, added two nose holes, and finished it with a big curve down below. People loved it, a lot.
(Weiwei) The Secret Project team named the face “Mark” originally, suggesting we students as creatives should “make our marks.” When we brought it back to the dorm in Avenue Apartment in Oakland (yes, we were freshmen then), some of our roommates giggled and thought it was interesting. So Bill and I talked about carrying the idea forward. We wanted to raise some awareness of this face.
We didn’t know what to do with this face, or what its purpose might be, but we were intrigued. We asked our teachers for constructive advice about how to push it out. We made stickers. We wanted to see where it might go.
(Bill) For the rest of the semester, I drew all kinds of recognizable characters out of the face. It was fun, and I knew that these faces would have a purpose eventually, if I drew them well.
Launch
It was during 2015’s winter break that we decided to launch it. We wanted to give this character a non-binary name. Plus, we didn’t want to make the face gender specific. Our friend, Taylor, who was our launching teammate, named it “Max” and we loved it.
(Bill) I first drafted out the plan, imagining Max as a person, an inspirational figure who lives among CCA students. Thinking about what Max would do, I then drafted out a series of Max personalities that have different interests.
(Weiwei) Once our friends Melissa Kim, Kelly Lei, and Taylor Wega were on board with this idea, we worked on the details of Max. What will Max post? What holes will Max attempt to fill? What do we want Max to be remembered as? In our discussions, we thought it could be interesting to go back to the original motivation of creating Max. As a result, the idea of creating a third campus for CCA, a digital campus called California College of Max surfaced.
Creating a third campus
What value would Max bring to the community? We discussed what we wished CCA offered to students and challenges students had. We condensed our thoughts into three features — personalities.
- Nerdy Max: A digital event aggregator could increase the exposure of events, as well as cool events that are hosted outside of school.
- Agent Max: A portal where anybody can share both happy and sad and interesting thoughts could keep us from getting stuck in our own major bubble.
- Curious Max: A detailed insider-look of CCA students’ work — nominated or personally shared — to discover what other student majors produce.
Through these personalities, we hoped that Max would bring a smiles to fellow students but also reveal authentic thoughts students might have.
Keeping Secrets
Since we remained anonymous as Team Max, we were very careful with what we opened around our classmates. Every time we would send the team a screenshot or a draft of something, we would send a warning message that says “open in private”, as if we were smuggling something…
(Melissa) Ugh, that was so hard. Since I was the main person writing and posting things at certain times (before we tried scheduling posts), there were so many times I’d be sitting on campus and a friend or peer would come over to talk to me. Thank God for hotkeys!
(Weiwei) One thing I would like to highlight about this process is that for every meeting the team Max had, it was enjoyable, fun, and a little scary. We felt anxious because we didn’t know how the school or our classmates would react. We were excited because we thought this could potentially work. Just like every project that you are ever proud of, chances are that you had amazing teammates, and you had fun playing. The feeling is hard to describe, but we know it’s extremely crucial to enjoy playing while working on a project, otherwise no good work will come out of it.
Branding Max and Guerrilla tatics
“It felt like we were sending out agents on undercover missions.”
We wanted Max to exist beyond the screen and wanted the community to engage with Max in physical space.
(Bill) Every semester, Max’s physical appearance had a theme behind it. In the beginning of the first semester, we introduced Max as a friend to spread the friendliness among the students.
For the second semester, we created ‘#IAmMax’ campaign, turning the question from ‘Who is Max’ to ‘We Are Max.’ We presented Max stickers of many iconic figures that I previously drew, inspiring students to be the their best selves.
The last semester we encouraged everybody to be a little dramatic. We installed physical emotion masks, which we called ‘xmoji.’ This is an idea to further humanize Max by inviting people to wear the masks. Unlike any other posters we’ve done, the mask installation was a big challenge.
(Kelly) To be specific, they were decorated masks, hanging on the ledge of a laser cut acrylic that is epoxy-ed on the back so that it would stay on a poster pinned and taped to the wall! You might think that keeping a few masks on the wall can’t be that hard? That’s what we thought until we set out our constraints. They needed to be protruding freely, easy to put on and off in seconds and hygienic too! When you have all those constraints running, even the most creative ideas get thrown out the window. But I sure am glad it worked out.
(Melissa) Every time we had to leave swag on campus, especially posters, I wanted to laugh aloud. It felt like we were sending out agents on undercover missions. Our hearts would be racing while we readied the posters and hid in dark classrooms as students walked past before running to slap them on the walls. It was scary but exhilarating because we were trying to remain anonymous.
(Weiwei) Occasionally, you would see stickers of Max in different forms on campus. Some were by the library, some were in classrooms, and some were even in the restrooms. With those, we wanted Max to be playful and fun, in a way that’s more personal than seeing a poster on campus. For those who have Max stickers on their student ID or laptops, we’ve secretly and silently made invisible high fives with you. ✋
Q&A with the team behind Max
We are Kelly Lei, Weiwei Hsu, Melissa Kim and Bill Chien, the team behind Max. Our friend Taylor Wega was part of the launching team and Linne Huang helped out before she graduated from the MFA program.
1. Was Max CCA a recognized platform by CCA?
No. Max was awoken in January 2016 and put to sleep in May 2017 as an independent project by us.
Some teachers contributed to the content on the page and we welcomed that, but Max is primarily a platform by students, for students. While we know staff often looked at the platform as a window to the daily lives of students, they purposefully refrained from posting themselves (there’s a whole set of rules they have to follow). We occasionally received messages from them asking us to remind students of resources, like the CCA Cares Form.
2. What was it like to launch Max?
Exciting, yet scary. We didn’t ask anybody for any permission, so we had to prepare everything ourselves. We printed the posters in China during our winter break, invited friends to create stickers with us, and drafted out all the content that would be posted on our Max Facebook account… The most memorable parts happened on campus when no one else was around. We all met on campus at 12 am the first Sunday after school started, and quietly dropped stickers and posters on campus. We didn’t know what would happen the next day. It could have ended up both ways. 🤞
(Weiwei) We were nervous. It could become another side project that will just fade away, or it could become something else. With Max sending friend requests on Facebook to CCA students and alumni, as well as being physically present through one of the few posters that are on campus, we heard many different discussions on campus. Some asked others if they knew what this is as they walked by the posters, some critiqued on the visual design of the posters, some thought it was interesting and perhaps cute, and some thought it’s an official CCA project/brand.
Eventually, we thought it’s better not to doubt our original thinking and try to guess what everybody was thinking. Instead, we decided to follow our plan — introduce the Max personalities throughout the week and make Max welcoming.
3. Were the Agent posts really anonymous?
Because most of the whispers were sent through Typeform, all we had was a serialized number that we couldn’t trace back to a person. We could tell if someone submitted more than once, but we couldn’t see who you were.
We know there are many questions. We’ve made a separate 👉 post dedicated to FAQs 👈 where you can also find out more about what it was like to run Max, how Max was branded, challenges we faced, and more.
What We Learned
Each of us took something different away from this project. (A more detailed explanation can be found in the FAQ post.)
(Bill) Learning by doing. Be persistent, and believe the process will lead to a valuable outcome.
(Weiwei) I wholeheartedly believe that having great teammates is important to doing good work, and having a good time as well.
(Melissa) Take charge of your ambitions, actually turn your negativity into fuel for action, and make a real difference in my community!
(Kelly) Your true friends are always there to support, not use you as a tool and dispose when you’re no longer needed.
If we had the opportunity to start all over again, we wouldn’t do any of it differently. We think a project would not be successful without making mistakes. Max is what it is today because of the decisions we made along the way.
Yet, moving forward, yes.
What’s next?
Max CCA will wake up to collaborate with Chimera Council, CCA’s recognized student council. This would ultimately hand over management of Max CCA to the Council (as the original Team Max will graduate in May) and make Max CCA a recognized platform by the school, but only under the Council. Max will always be a platform by students and for students, untouchable by all things boring and official. We have made adjustments based on our previous experience and feedback, which you will see as the academic year continues. We certainly hope that Max CCA can continue to be a place where students can be their authentic selves.
Bill and Weiwei (and our friend Damon Lam) started a Facebook group call The CCA Underground for second-hand trading before they launched Max CCA. Overtime, it has become the only place where students can not only sell their old items, but also share their surveys, ask others for advice, look for help for a project, even share a job posting, etc. Very often, those posts would get buried under trading posts. To keep The CCA Underground as a “Buy and Sell” group, and to give attention to posts that helps to foster a healthy community, we have created a new Facebook group call The Max CCA Guild.
Here’s to the next chapter of Max CCA!
How can I help?
If you are a CCA student, there are several ways that you can help to support Max or grow Max into something even bigger.
Be supportive. We don’t encourage you to be on Facebook 24/7, but we do hope whenever you see valuable posts on Max, react, comment, or share thoughtfully and engage in truthful conversations. Even more importantly, be able to actively listen to others without jumping to conclusions or problem-solving. It isn’t until we can listen to one another that we can have a meaningful conversation.
Be contributive. Like we mentioned, we share events, student work, and voices. You are always welcomed to message Max CCA to recommend events and opportunities (#NerdyMax), send your work (#CuriousMax), and whisper your thoughts on your college experience (#AgentMax). Yes, the Agent Max portal has now reopened, and the world will be listening.
Be involved. Max encourages authorship and longs for creativity that brings the community closer. If you are a CCA student and interested in being part of Team Max, consider sending Chimera Council a message or wait until applications for joining the Council open in February.
Colophon
Max CCA wouldn’t have existed without the help from our colleagues, friends and teachers. We would like to express our gratitude to:
Barry Katz, Brian McMullen, Christina Wodkte, Damon Lam, Eric Heiman, Gopika Prabhu, Haakon Faste, John Bielenberg, Linne Huang, Marc O’Brien, Matt Lew, Miki Setlur, Taylor Wega, and Tim Belonax.
We would also like to highlight the two people that inspired Max CCA: Ben Barry and Everett Katigbak who co-founded Facebook Analog Research Lab.
Lastly, we want to give a huge THANK YOU to those who support and believe in Max. We really appreciate your love and participations from the bottom of our hearts. It is you that inspired us to keep going!
Onward,
Team Max
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