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maker festivals brand family

GOAL: Create an event brand family to realign and unite four separate events under a single entity.

ROLE: Concepting • Brand Strategy • Creative Direction

Based on the success of long-running enthusiast events Yarn Fest and Bead Fest, Golden Peak Media launched Stitch Fest and Art Fest in early 2023. The initial challenge was to create similar event brands that would be tied to separate craft community brands under Golden Peak Media. Yet once the Stitch Fest and Art Fest brands were established, the need arose for a collective event brand to tie the separate Fests into one flexible yet cohesive experience, allowing the events to target a wider range of art and craft enthusiasts.

The challenge evolved into establishing a new Maker Festivals parent brand, creating a logical hierarchy between it and the individual Fests, while continuing to grow Art Fest and Stitch Fest recognition and maintaining the brand equity in the longstanding existing Yarn Fest and Bead Fest brands.

To address these issues, I first directed the development of the new brand visuals to align with and maximize cohesion with the existing brands. Next, alongside executive, marketing, and sales partners, I led a multi-step approach to build brand recognition through strategic brand linking, employing flexible, context-based hierarchies. The usage of the new brands then evolved over time as their equity increased.

origins

Expanding on the much-loved Yarn Fest and Bead Fest events, Stitch Fest was created to serve Golden Peak Media’s Quilting Daily and Sew Daily communities, and Art Fest for the Artists Network community. Stitch Fest and Art Fest were designed to fit well visually alongside Yarn Fest and Bead Fest, utilizing similar structures and fonts. The new event taglines and colors were chosen to create connections with their associated craft community brands.

repositioning

A unified parent brand was needed to tie together the individual Fests so that they could be presented in various combinations at any given event. The corporate Golden Peak Media brand is not well known, so a new entity was created—Maker Festivals—and the individual Fests aligned under it.

Design: Maker Festivals picks up the original Fest slab font and pairs it with a clean sans-serif font already in use by the corporate Golden Peak Media brand. My team then created a gradient to tie together the individual Fest brand colors and stripped back the color in the Fest wordmarks.

Location variations

Multiple lockups were created for the various combination of Fests at different event locations.

Promotional signage and collateral

Onsite signage

Onsite signage continued the brand linking and created a clean, professional backdrop for the lively, colorful collection of vendors, displays, attendees, and activities.