HORST Arts & Music Festival
This project was created for the Horst Arts and Music Festival, that takes place annually in Vilvoorde, Belgium. It aims to capture the unique collection and types of art that can be enjoyed at the festival, while creating and maintaining an identity that targets the demographics of festival-goers. This project includes establishing a design system that is applied to various projects at various scales.
Role
Brand and Identity Designer,
Art Direction
Tools
Illustrator, InDesign
Timeline
September 2021 - December 2021
Case Study
Project Overview
The Horst Arts & Music Festival is a festival which aims to blend together music, with on-site artworks, into one unique experience. The purpose is to celebrate various forms of art and expression, and to give a platform for artists, from upcoming to well-known, to showcase their talent.
The festival's unique concept, combined with the annual themes , requires the design to reflect, as well as communicate them to a potential audience. This is done thorough research into the festival, as well as its audience demographics and psychographics.
Visual Design
The visual design of the system illuminates the environment of the festival abstractly, and the typography and linework, serve to showcase the various forms or arts present.
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Orange - bold, energetic, happy and friendly environment
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Blue - the freeing, inspirational, and imaginative feeling at the festival.
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Charcoal Gray - being engulfed into a new environment, and letting the works around transform you.
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Lightbeam White - the feeling of looking directly into bright light/being blinded by beauty.
Target Audience
The target audience of the festival, that the design is aimed towards are both male and female, between the ages of 18 to 40 years old. The audience can be described as young and outgoing, and enjoy social events and interacting with other people and through social media. They are creative people with a love for art and expressing themselves creatively and visually.
Concept
The concept of the festival identity was to use abstract forms and typography to create a poster that captivates the audience while being reflective of the festival feeling, theme and nature. The festival allows for expressing creativity and strives for innovation and out of the box thinking, so through the overall design, it allows the audience to engage and immerse into the poster through their own interpretation and expression.
Through the bold colours, expressive typography, and abstract concepts, the identity addresses the young, creative and extroverted personality of the target festival-goers.
The use of organic lines and circular shapes symbolizes not only unity and connectedness, but along with the dissolved grain effect, serves to illuminate the festival’s theme that aims to disconnect from digital communication, and embrace natural interaction. The 3D letterforms show the architectural aspect of the festival, and the use of repeating lines create rhythm that alludes to the music element along with the main distorted type which reflects the beat/echo nature of electronic music. Lastly the paper texture and completely digitized poster are reflective of the contemporary and experimental art the festival offers.
Additional Elements
In order to extend the visual identity across a greater array of designs, a set of flags, tags and shirts were designed, following the constants established within the system. In addition, social media posts were designed, to create an online platform to market the festival and create an online community.
Ideation Process
Before reaching the final design of the poster, various concepts, ideas, variations,
design decisions, and refinements were made.
Initial Drafts
During the exploration and experimentation phase of the project and poster development, the sketches explored various communication methods, in order to determine the one most suitable for the festival and theme.
Reflection and Project Takeaways
Reflecting back on this project, I learned the importance of knowing exactly what it is that you want to communicate to the audience. It is important to always look back at the design, layout and typography, to ensure that they support and reflect the ideas clearly. Tasked with developing a visual system that is applied to a variety of different designs, scales and purposes, it was important to use visuals that can be clearly, and can be easily scaled and translated.
A few of the things I learned from this project were:
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The process of developing a versatile and concise visual system applicable across multiple designs and mediums.
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Designing at various scales, using the same set of system elements, and deciding what elements, styles, and designs to include depending on the purpose of the design, to ensure readability and clarity is maintained.
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The importance of always keeping in mind the message that you want to communicate and doing frequent check-ins to ensure that the design is communicating the message clearly.
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Designing a poster, e-ticket, and programme, creating variety between the designs, to make each one unique, all while maintaining the same consistent feel of the visual system.
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Keeping in mind the target audience and designing with them in mind.
Overall, this project was an amazing learning opportunity the process and application of visual design and identity systems. It taught me the importance of doing prior research into the client and/or target audience, to ensure the final design is in line with the client and who the design is for.