Festival of the Arts
An annual three-part campaign that showcases Sacramento’s art, dance, & music.
Objective:
To create a cohesive and compelling campaign that spans through the three sub-campaigns to promote campus-wide events across multiple mediums.
Solution:
What originally started as a class assignment, transformed into a full-blown production for this year’s Festival of the Arts. The event had its own challenges that included creating two additional sub-campaigns – Sunday Funday and U-Create – that corresponded with the Festival of the Arts, as well as adjusting the designs to different physical and digital mediums effectively.
The poster was the first piece to create as it was the largest at 16” x 20” and it aided in adapting the design for the other formats. To ensure that the imagery was new and exciting on each of the pieces, slight variations and tweaks to the positions of the elements were needed, but it was still important to keep the same tone and mood.
The design structure developed for the Festival of the Arts focused around three main forms: circular shapes, triangular planes, and repeating circles as lines. The circular shapes increase and decrease in size and arch toward the circle to generate movement. The triangular planes create focal points and generate movement around the piece. Finally, the repeating circles act as a line element hold the composition together, frame it, and echo outward, which activates the negative spaces.
The second campaign, U-Create, had a pre-existing mark for its branding, which needed to be reused. It was a hexagonal shape, and thus, the design had to be adapted from the circles to fit the theme. The shapes were replaced with hexagons, and a new drop shadow-styled element was used underneath the existing shapes. The circle as line element was also removed.
Finally, Sunday Funday – the final event for the campaign, was catered toward families – was created off the Festival of the Arts campaign. This campaign style had a slightly different color palette, a similar typed text treatment for the title as last year’s, and a variation on the way the graphic elements interact.
In addition to the black background, the elements were used differently from the Festival of the Arts. The circles are now an atmospheric element that are sprinkled around the black negative space. The triangular planes have additional triangles built in them to create visual interest. And the circle as line elements guide the viewer through the piece.
The main challenge of the campaign was adhering to the different parameters for each of the pieces. Digital pieces need RGB color spaces, printed pieces need bleeds, and each one has different size requirements, which made it challenging to make sure each one is readable and effective.
Overall, the experience was one of a kind. The magnitude of applications for each of the pieces was plentiful and varied. It was an experience that cannot be forgotten.
