We were approached by the event organizers with a simple idea, and a willingness to adapt and form the brand to how we saw fit, collaboratively. The impetus behind this First Annual Music (and Arts—added later in the discovery phase) Festival was to give back to the community and show the locals the impact that their support and community has had on the artists that they have cultivated. 

We worked in rounds to identify some key elements that spoke to the feeling the organizers wanted to portray, and began to bring into focus an aesthetic and design system that was not only unique to events in that area, but also scalable.

Brand identity and design system for the first annual Vermont Music & Arts Festival. We worked at trying to distill specific thematic aspects of Vermont, its landscape, and the music and art community as a whole, into a series of illustrations, iconography, and identity lockup. We landed on a thick lined illustrative system (taking cues form Draplin Design Co) that targeted some of the more iconic Vermont features (Lake Champlain, covered bridges, and Camel’s Hump) that could work as a set or independently. These were supported by a nice pairing of semi-abstract icons that paid homage to the two main themes: music and arts. We chose to run the gamut of ROYGBIV in our palette, and brought in a nice chunky gothic serif wordmark with tight kerning to put a bow on the impact of the overall system. With the turnout being quite substantial for a first annual event, we’re excited to see where the team would like to go next year, and years to come.