The Museum de Carnivale
CURRENTLY AWAITING MARK FROM INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGNERS COMPETITION 2013 (ISTD)
Brief/Project: The Museum of the Circus is coming and you are asked to provide the branding and publicity for the building or a moving image piece which will be used as a ‘filler’ between films in the auditorium or projected to entertain queues waiting for events to begin. You must create the name, logo and applied identity for the Museum of the Circus. The name & style of the museum is optional, I chose to change it to help me with my concept and creation.
Throughout the late 19th Century up to the middle of the 20th century, North America enjoyed the entertainment of traveling carnivals. These carnivals featured circus-style performances, vaudeville or burlesque shows, games of skill and chance, freak shows, sideshows, fortune tellers, and rides such as the carousel and Ferris wheel. Carnivals became particularly popular during the depression years, sometimes known as the “Dirty Thirties,” and by 1937 it is estimated that more than 300 carnivals were touring North America.
The concept behind the Travelling Museum de Carnivale is that rather than museum showcasing the history of American originated travelling carnivals, it offers attendees the opportunity to experience a museum in the form of a travelling carnival. The museum is inspired by the whimsical travelling carnivals that brought joy to the world throughout the 1930’s depression era. The Travelling Museum de Carnivale travels around the world like an authentic travelling carnival and sets up in the fairgrounds for one month per location before hitting the road again, just like the original carnivals would. The museum is booked to appear in a town or city where it will set up and live on designated areas. The carnival features equipment which is authentic, collected throughout the years, or modelled authentically to match.
The museum will be hosted throughout a variety of replica canvas tents rather than buildings to give the audience a more authentic atmosphere. The museum will not only showcase the historical carnivals but also offer a variety of performances and entertainment, which is traditional to less modern carnivals so guests can experience the true history physically. The museum has a variety of attractions to offer including vintage rides straight from the dusty midways of the carnivals in the early 1900’s, a selection of antique carnival games and is proud to present it’s very own Spiegeltent which plays a large performance of true carnival circus acts every evening.
The carnival will also offer an adults only night where only those over the age of 18 can attend and witness the mature and somewhat perverse reality behind the Travelling Carnivals. The night will involve a large Vaudevillian performance in the Spiegeltent, including a burlesque hoochie show, thrill acts and performing freaks.
The design process I took for branding the Travelling Museum de Carnivale was was to use texture and colours which I derived from the atmosphere and environment found within the dusty midways of the travelling carnivals from the depression era. A lot of people associate carnivals and circus with bright colours but the original carnivals from the era’s of the early 1900’s were a lot less colourful, they were dirty and dusty. The way that I perceived the carnivals, including the fact that they were a wonderful source of fun and entertainment in such a depressing era, was as magic and beauty ontop of dirt, both literally and figuratively. I wanted to keep my designs stylized and true to this theme, using lots of textures, dirty colours but still keeping a whimsical touch to the designs to keep the magic of the carnivals through them.
I gained a lot of inspiration in my design process after discovering through my research about Carnivale Lune Bleue, a live carnival entertainment event, which has it’s own international team of circus and carnival advisors, including Johnny Meah, famous for his work as a carnival advisor and historical consultant for the HBO show Carnivàle, Claude Le Belle who was one of Cirque du Soleil’s first “Tent Masters, Jan-Rok Achard, an internationally renowned circus historian, Holde Unverzagt who painted numerous show fronts and banners for amusement parks and carnivals, and Jim Conklin, the largest amusement show provider in Canada since the 1920s to create the most lifelike and authentic old-fashioned carnival experience. Not having such a profound team at my side I gathered much visual inspiration from the event's appearance, which held a lot of authenticity in terms of how the old carnivals appeared.
I also learned that this team was involved in a television program, ‘Carnivàle’ which is set in the United States during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl and involved a further team of significant researchers and historical consultants to create the set for the program. I own the full series of the program and went through the entire series whilst designing so to get a full experience of the carnival environment.
