Target Audience: Families and all ages ranging youth through seniors (7 – 75)

Background: The Gilroy Garlic Festival is a three-day, outdoor event and cultural spectacle for food and those who love garlic. The event regularly draws 100,000 people over three days each summer, and some are concerned that the trend towards media and electronics, and away from live event participation, may see a drop-off in attendance. Hope is to continue to attract mainstay festival-goers and foodies, and to continue to attract new people in the 18-30 age categories by making authentic, crafted tradition a theme.

DESIGN PROBLEM: Gilroy Garlic Festival has been going on for decades, but many do not know that Gilroy was a historically important stage turnover site in the stagecoach lines that ran up the Camino Real from Monterey to points north. City leaders want to harken back to the California roots and expand the tent of those who might attend, promising warm, family-friendly entertainment and a wholesome day in the sun. I hoped to create historically referential pieces that built on the known tropes of California history as well as used design elements from the early days of print journalism that coincided with California’s first 50 years of statehood.

DESIGN PROCESS: I looked up old newspapers online and in museums of the West, visiting sites like the Berkeley University historical library and museums of history in towns like Santa Fe and Steamboat Springs. Typefaces, type layout, color choices, and overall whimsical design became part of a language of images and colors that I brought to the design of the event’s materials. Sketches, downloads of images, and drafts of variations all played a part before moving into more finished digital versions.

DESIGN SOLUTION: A hand-made “GARLIC” typeface, created especially for the Gilroy Garlic Festival was wedded to existing woodblock and other poster type, historical typefaces, adopting an “anti-unified” style set mimicking the broadsheet and handout flyers of the mid to late nineteenth century, when promoters hawked transcontinental travel and journeys by ship through the isthmus of Panama or El Salvador as the newly won territory of the California coast was developed.

A choice was made to represent the Gilroy Garlic Festival logo and all of its materials with a unity of style, including typeface and icon art, played against an aged paper texture. Billboards will attract and remind drivers on the 101 Highway, which passes nearby, and the app will assist those attending in navigating around the location at Christmas Hill Park.