Working with The Performance Arcade 2020
Updated: Feb 13, 2020
The Performance Arcade is NZ's leading performance art & music festival. It's held annually during summer along the waterfront of our beautiful capital and features a variety of local and international performers.
I started contracting with the Arcade in November last year as the Lead Graphic Designer of the festival and in a few weeks time I will be wrapping up my contract. It's been a whirl-wind of a time working with other talent creatives and I thought I would share a bit about the process of what is looks like to design for a festival!
1. Research and new branding
The first task was to first get on-boarded with the team and understand what the festival was all about. Once I felt I had some good direction and knew how I could evolve the visual language from last year, it was time to get into some concepts.
Before I started on any actual design finals, I had produced a Visual Style Guide including typography, logos, colours and icons.
2. Web Design
Now that we have the new branding, it's time to update the website with it! The website was already build on Wix, so together with my awesome web & video intern, we applied the new look to the website and implemented some helpful tools like Google Maps, a spotify playlist to showcase our Live Music Series as well as videos of past events and our Instagram.
We also used a database to populate all our artist page - this was a huge time saver for the both of us!
3. Social Media
Because we had links to our social media accounts on the website, it was also important that we updated all of our channels with the new branding and work out a social media plan. Lead by our fantastic Marketing Manager our two design & marketing interns crafted an approach for Instagram and Facebook. We focused mostly on showcasing our amazing artists and had them doing IG story takeovers to show some behind the scenes of their work.
4. The Pink Line
One of the most interesting parts of this project was developing a concept for The Pink Line. It was a challenge to work digitally for something which would be implemented spatially. The Pink Line is a way-finding device which runs along the waterfront to direct you to the Arcade. There are many things to interact with along the way and we had the opportunity to thank our sponsors along the line too. Kaffee Eis for example will be creating some delicious pink themed icecream for the duration of the festival.
5. Print Work
Print was something which was in somewhat unfamiliar territory for me. I have produced print collateral in the past but often not on a scale which was needed for this project. At some stage soon, we will have a HUGE billboard of our headlining performance of MULJIL at the Wellington Train Station. Keep your eye out for it!
But besides this, I also produced runs of A3-A0 size posters, the festival brochure, lightboxes and also digital posters for Manners Library (not print I know but similar concept).
There are still a few last pieces for me to finalise for the festival in the next weeks - but this is pretty much the gist of what I've been up to!