My concept for branding the festival began with brainstorming the nerdiest object I could come up with, which was a 20-sided die. Using this as a silhouette, it didn't take long for the KC skyline to become a part of the logo as well. The branding for KCNF has taken on many iterations in the past three years since its inception, and I'm excited to keep evolving it for years to come. 

The website for KCNF has tons of moving parts–more than just the initial animation when you arrive at the home page. There's an online store, a page for performers to apply, event pages that update each year, as well as ticketing links that appear when tickets become available. It's constantly evolving, and represents the spirit of the festival.

The Kansas City Nerdlesque Festival can't be a successful event without attendees–so my task each year is to bring an audience through print and online marketing–and we do pretty well, selling out most of the showcases in 2019 through a combination of print and online marketing.

It's not an easy task to advertise a festival that goes for 6 days, has a ton of events and shows, and brings in over 40 performers from outside Kansas City yearly. We're still working on perfecting the sell, but we keep getting better each year.

Each year, we compile a ton of content for the festival into a booklet for our patrons and performers alike, and we've named it the Nerdonomicon. We get tons of advertisers itching for a spot in it, and it's always a big hit with our patrons. Production values are important to me as a designer–if you build it, and it looks hella slick, they will come.

If you'd like to view all the pages in our 2019 Nerdonomicon, click here.

Our performers have always been a great help in spreading the word about the festival–and we've made it even easier every year by creating them custom profile photos for social media. It's a tedious task to get everyone's information correct, but the results are a great way to get people's attention.

Each showcase at KCNF had a theme determined by the kind of acts that were cast in it. this allowed us to advertise each show separately–focusing on the non-weekend showcases and events that occurred earlier in the festival. My strategy was based on the assumption that people who attended shows earlier in the week would be more likely to then buy tickets for shows later in the week. My theory was correct, and that's exactly what happened.

Below are examples of the branding/illustrations I did for each show.

During events leading up to the festival, like First Fridays, we created promotional displays and invited people attending these events to learn about the festival. Engaging with potential audience members was a powerful tool in increasing attendance and awareness of the festival.

During the festival, each thing that attendees interacted with from KCNF was carefully thought out and designed–from the All Access Passes to the Nerdonomicon. Once we succeeded in convincing someone to attend our festival, it was our responsibility to ensure they had an amazing experience, and many times, it's the little things that make the experience phenomenal.