Defining and refining the brand

I did the poster design and some social and motion assets for 2022’s Same Same But Different festival in Southern California on Lake Perris (you can see my work from that year here) and the promoters liked the work so much they asked me to return for the 2023 fest, but this time in an expanded role. A common factor with most music festivals is how they often start off with a less disciplined brand system, usually defined and then refined after the fest has had a few years to get up and running. During those first few years there can be a few too many variations in color, type, texture, etc. present and SSBD wanted the 2023 iteration of the event to have a more structured brand system and they wanted me to be part of creating that look.

Redesigning the logo

The mark they had from the beginning through 2022 was nice but to my taste felt a touch too indebted to 00s blog house culture and the aesthetics of the time. I sought to take what was strong about the mark and shake off the early-millenial design nods to give us a sleeker, more streamlined mark that updated the vibe of the event visually.

Use the slider below to compare the pre-2023 logo with the current updated version…

You can see how the new mark plays with the new illustration I made of Lake Perris in the static and motion lineup announcement posters below…

And of course we then articulated this new look through all manner of social assets, maps, wayfinders, etc…

The industry comes roaring back

In winter 2019/20 I was working on art for several music festivals (nearly all festivals are planned several months in advance as they end up impacting many artists’ touring plans for the years they occur in. Of course then (motions around) things changed. Spring dates shifted optimistically to early summer, then late summer, then autumn before being ultimately shelved. A trend that would stick around for a year or two. Since Covid first hit in 2020 there have been multiple false starts and plans that never made it past the initial planning stages. 2023 felt like things were finally geting back to normal. That year I would do four music festivals just in the first four months of the year.

I was thrilled when Activated Events asked me to help them rebrand their long-running Coastal Country Jam festival, which would be returning in 2023 but in a very different location than its original stomping grounds in Huntington Beach. The festival was moving north. To Long Beach. And that change of venue was going to inform the artwork.

Avoiding the usual “country/western” tropes

Sure, this was a country music festival but it was also a California country music festival. On the beach no less. The look would need to avoid all the usual trappings associated with country music. No boots, for instance. And it should at least nod to the California model of country. A bit more Eagles than Charlie Daniels Band. I set to work on a few different brand marks to see about presenting this specific vibe. And as I often do, I would start with color. What could bridge the gap in vibe here? Sand, sea, earth tones and honky tonks. All that. I put together a simple palette as my jumping off point. 

Color and type are often my way “in” on a project. Each carries its own language and tone into things that help light the path toward what the other elements will be. So next I’dd find some type that could live in that space between Country tradition and California attitude. I would mock up a couple basic logotypes.

The further along we got into the process the more we realized that the new location would be such a major change that it should be primary in the artwork. Almost like Long Beach itself was a headliner. So in the third mark above I began working notable Long Beach landmarks into the art. The Queen Mary, the Lions Lighthouse, the Gerald Desmond Bridge. All local landmarks that would feature in the eventual art, poster, and social assets were beginning to work their way in here. I even rough mocked up a version that leaned perhaps too heavily on SoCal beach vibes.  

Personally, I was kind of fond of that direction, but it was becoming clear during the process that the new location in Long Beach would need to be more overtly expressed in the design. It was about 15 miles to the north of its previous location in Huntington Beach but these were LA freeway miles and that might need to be part of the pitch to festivalgoers.  Visually, the skyline would be the star as the festival would be taking place on Long Beach’s scenic harbor shoreline at their recently revamped convention center. With that in mind, I reworked the concept to make Long Beach primary. But I still wanted this to have a flavor different than what one might get from a tourism photo. There should be a sense of fun, buoyancy and simplicity in the illustration style. But for right now we needed to get the logotype locked in. I was able to come up with a mix of vibes that was a little bit Pacific Waterfront and a little Country so that the two halves would complement each other. At last we had our mark…

Now to couch it in an inviting setting. Much like with my artwork for the California State Fair’s 50th anniversary, I felt the setting needed to be more of a vibe than a factual schematic. You should feel the amber of the setting sun and the warm Pacific breeeze as it colored the skyline, the sea, the setting. Employing an abstract, if minimal, style would allow a few larger-than-life liberties to be taken that would make the location feel welcoming and inviting. 

It was all beginning to come together. We had an iconic illustration for what would be an iconic setting for a fantastic weekend. I wanted that vibe to extend to the motion assets as well. Less of a kinetic assault and more of a pleasant sunbeam to bask in. “Inviting” again would be the watchword here. I wanted it to pleasantly coax you in.

And of course with our footing established and a look in place, we then articulated this out through a number of different assets 

California State Fair Poster 2017: The Concept

2017 marked the California State Fair’s 50th year at Sacramento’s Cal Expo fairgrounds since moving there from inside the city proper in 1968. To mark the occasion, my then-fiancé-now-wife (UnCommon‘s Amber Witzke, who has worked as Art Director and designer on CSF branding the past several years) suggested we make a limited edition poster in the style of Disneyland’s classic attraction posters, specifically an homage to their classic and iconic Monorail poster.

Cal Expo has its own monorail (if a bit less sleek and “jet age” as the ones in Anaheim and Orlando) and what’s more its also been the site of Disney’s California Adventure’s transplanted “CALIFORNIA” entrance letters since 2013. We could use these connections to create something really exciting and special as a souvenir to promote the anniversary.

Amber had a rough sketch for how she wanted things to go, and for the most part we would stick to this plan. The most important thing was getting that arc of the monorail track right, which is a trickier hurdle to clear than you might think. The angle needed to be just right to give a sense of sweep and velocity. A few degrees off and the monorail becomes tame and inert. We wanted “woosh.”

I wanted this poster to reach out at you and pull you in. Perspective became key. To that end that’s also where I began. The very first thing I did was set a low horizon line and a number of radial perspective lines with a starting arc for the monorail track. While these would shift slightly over the course of putting it all together it was absolutely vital in keeping things in harmony as they were added.

The Process

We wanted the color palette to hew toward the gold and blue of the State Fair ribbon they are using as its logo but we wanted to involve some pinks and possibly purple as well to give it all the feeling of the unique sunsets we enjoy all summer here in Sacramento. Being on the ground at CalExpo gives one the perfect vantage point for those sunsets: long shadows, impossibly bright horizons climbing up to brilliant pink skies. I wanted that feeling to come across crystal clear. How would it feel as a perfect day at the fair turns into an electric night? The colors and perspective would need to carry that weight. The feeling of a “golden hour” blown-out sunset.
One of the other challenges I faced was how to represent multiple facets of the State Fair. It couldn’t just be about the rides as the Fair is more than just a carnival. We’d need to incorporate a diversity of attractions as well as a diversity of people. Of course we would have a towering ferris wheel, but we’d also need landmarks like the famous water tower (here repainted to its initial 60s “mod” paint job), events like horse racing, agricultural exhibits and a petting zoo, the skyway ride ferrying attendees above it all and populating it people of all sizes, ages, shapes, and ethnicities. I even decided to include a wheelchair-bound visitor in the petting zoo to give us a greater spectrum of visibilities throughout. This was a fair for everyone and I wanted that to come across as much as is possible with an illustration rendered in a restricted palette of colors.

The Aesthetic

I wanted this illustration to have the feeling of being organically created in spite of it being produced entirely within illustrator. Where possible I would scan in and employ hand-drawn textures, and I included areas of airbrush-style shading to soften up the over all look. The sunset would create a lot of sharp edges in the lighting but I didn’t want the overall look to be too severe. Stippling the night sky and some of the transitional shadows would help things not look too angular and hard on the eyes. The clouds were the trickiest part and I tried a number of things there. If the clouds were too fluffy and buoyant they tended to step on the perspective. Putting the clouds into the same perspective as everything else just didn’t feel organic. I needed a different option. Eventually I stopped thinking of the clouds as clouds and instead thought about shape. What shape would I want here, and could clouds be made to conform to it? I painted in the most blunt strokes I possibly could, reduced the canvas size onscreen, squinted a bit, and worked the strokes until they had the kind of impact I’d want them to from 100 feet. That ended up being a breakthrough in more ways than one since it also is how I arrived at an overarching theme for the poster…

Conclusion

More than any other poster I’ve designed this is likely the one I will end up proudest of and I’m incredibly grateful that it found its way to me. In all my work I am fascinated with perspective and movement and here I think I have found a way to boldly express both. Moreover I am glad to have been afforded the opportunity to contribute a little something to the history of the state I love and which I’ve called home for nearly 20 years.