Branding and Identity

The Freedom Festival is an event where people can join and meet together to celebrate their freedom in an accepting and broad-minded environment. I wanted to reflect this ideology within the re-brand and try to elevate the meaning in the current design for the Freedom Festival so the brand can keep in line with how brand identity in this climate is moving forward. At this point in time the current branding for the event is heavily based on solid primary colours that repeat throughout the online campaign. This succeeds in the consistency of brand recognisability, however I believe this makes the design look childish due to the lack of visual interest in the designs. Everything appears more on the 2D side with all the solid colours and limited patterns which makes the brand seem more flat and one-dimensional, which I don’t think represents the rich history of Hull and what the Freedom Festival stands for very well.

Within my re-design I wanted to keep the fun and light aspect within the colours and imagery used to represent the activities and celebrations that go on during the day but with a slight edge to it to include a more dark and intense feel to it. I wanted to do this due to how during my research of the festival I was almost completely unaware that the event even carried on towards the night due to how little representation there was of it throughout their website and branding. To do this I was heavily inspired from the heavy usage of neon signs and the sense of urban-ness that residents experience in Hong Kong. The imagery of bright, flashing neon signs are very prevalent within the city as they can be seen throughout restaurants, banks and video game parlours. The connotations of the neon sign that lights up the city after the sun goes down can be related to prosperity and resplendence when the artistic manufacturing of the modern light is set against a black sky and urban city. As well as this the symbolism of neon signs in retro video games can bring an air of excitement and buzz to the freedom festival but also a sense of calmness and tranquillity due their use of mood lighting within home settings to create a relaxing space. I believe this duality reflects the messaging of the freedom festival well in the sense of wanting to fight for freedom and celebrating it through art but also to sit peacefully within the positive and equal space that’s been created.

I also wanted to include elements of graffiti style into the branding as I think it pairs appropriately with the neon sign that further gives the idea of living in an urban city and despite their being lots of flashing lights and excitement going on around you there are still subtle reminders of the history the festival represents through the gritty and rustic imagery.

Icons

One main part of the imagery and iconography I used throughout the brand re-design is the use of the neon sign arrows. As simple as they are I found they were very adaptable and could be transformed and manipulated in a number of ways to fit whatever design-scenario I was in. I can easily change the direction of which they were point in order to point directly at a specific element which was useful if I wished to draw the viewers eye to a specific area.

Due to the ergonomics of the arrow shape they were able to fit together in a number of ways that could represent numerous things as well as become a repeatable brand pattern that can be used in merchandise or as backgrounds.

I designed the arrow in two separate colour ways that I used interchangeably depending on if the contrast would be high enough on whatever background it may have laid on. These colours also became a part of the main colour palate that would then be used within the whole brand identity.

To make the arrows more versatile and less clunky I removed the text from the middle so they can be used in simple scenarios without being 100% clear it’s related to the Freedom Festival but just through brand recognisability the public know the icon is related to the event.

Here I used the same neon sign technique to create little emblems that I can use to demonstrate certain activities on posters or the website.

It’s important to include social media links onto the website to try and drive traffic from one main source to as many other forms of advertisement as possible to diversify your audience. I re-coloured these core social media logos to that of the re-brands colour palate so it can blend in seamlessly.

Colour Palate

For the colour palate I wanted there to be a healthy mix of darker hues that I can use for the campaign when I want to display the evening events and lighter colours for the day time. I also wanted at least three of the colours to be suitable enough to be made into neon signs as they needed to be the right level of brightness and saturation in order for them to work.

Logo

I used the main font family “Rushford Printed” to create the logo that I’d use for the entire campaign as it had a gritty/graffiti like feel that I thought suited the concept of a festival. I arranged the main logo into a rectangular orientation to allow for easy placement as the lines are completely straight surrounding the lettering. The sizing of the text also allows for varying arrangements with the body of text only being on a singular line which Would be appropriate for designs which call for more space being needed underneath the logo. I also used both a light and darker colour for “FREEDOM” so that it can be used or varying light mods and the words “FESTIVAL” AND “2024” are both in the same colour so to draw the eye to the most important word in the logo being “freedom”.

Typographical Standards

Throughout the campaign I have 3 main font family’s that I use for the typography. Rushford Printed being the one I use for all the main headings including the logo as that is the font that I think holds the most uniqueness and hand-drawn qualities needed for what I wanted the headings to look like. I wanted a blocky, sans serif font as they are bold and leave a big impact on the viewer and despite it looking a bit worn away it is still very legible. On the other hand the current font design used for “Freedom” across the branding is very blocky but slightly harder to interpret due to the “ee’s” looking very different to normal.

Brand Patterns

I created 2 simple brand patterns that I can use for the backgrounds of posters (when the opacity is lowered down) as well as merchandise that can help solidify the brand identity to the public and become more recognisable as a brand. I used the simple neon arrows in a repeat formation with one point in one direction and the other arrow in another. I wanted this arrangement of the arrows to represent how the festival takes place year after year and doesn’t have any plans of stopping in order to keep the celebration of freedom alive within Hull.

Here are 2 more simple backgrounds: one of them being the soft, pastel background I had created that can be used primarily as the background for the website as well as the brick background which I’ve used to layer under the neon signs in order to make the stand out more as well as giving them a more natural environment for them to sit on top of.

I’ve designed 2 quick mock-ups of how the pattern design and logo may appear in environmental applications in a graffiti-esque style.