Our longtime editor and collaborator, Charley Schwartz, showed us some rough cuts based on ideas we'd talked about. Then he said, "Oh, and I've been screwing around with this other thing. It'll probably never work." The resulting spot (above) is probably my favorite we've ever done.
The Fair has a longtime affiliation with the local transit commission, so we get a sweetheart deal on bus sides. Lord, I love bus sides.
This last bus side ran in nearby Wisconsin, the Badger State. Minnesota is of course the Gopher State. If you know that, it's funny.
The Fair's existing logo, signage and architectural graphics were charming, iconic—and absolutely all over the place. We wanted to retain their essential spirit and character, but bring order to the madness.
Below are elements of the new indentity. As you can see, we kept the blue and green thing going, but cleaned it up a lot. Our goal was to create an entire new design program—and have nobody know we'd changed anything. We tweaked the type a lot, created a couple of new characters, and played endlessly with the stars and ribbons until they were just right.
