BACKGROUND
The project started when…
I was asked to be the lead designer of New Orleans’ first annual BlackAmericana Fest. From website design to designing the festival signs and merch, this is the process of how I worked on this enormous project. I worked under the creative direction of founders Dusky Waters, Teena May and Mark T. Williams II with the use of Icon art by local New Orleans artist Mecca. The Festival had a very specific aesthetic and cultural purpose that was to be represented on all branding and marketing.
DESIGN TEMPLATE
There was an existing Design Template for this project. Founder Jenn Jeffers created a Festival color scheme, font and commissioned local New Orleans artist Mecca to create the logos. The 3 defining colors of the festival were Blue, Orange and Yellow. We wanted all messaging and branding of the festival to include this color scheme. All font from the poster to the signs and website was going to include the brand specific “CS Gordon” font. It was important from the start to a have a unified look and vision for the festival and essential create a festival specific brand. These colors ended up playing a big part in the creation of the website too.
FESTIVAL SIGNS AND MERCH
I was tasked with designing the festival signs and merch. There were multiple stages and areas that needed signage including an official Crown Royal VIP Lounge. There were also festival schedule cubes, stage signs, craft area and merchandise signs. For the merch we ended up with two different t shirt designs, a bandana, a tote bag and stickers and buttons. All of the signs and merch included the Festival logos and offical BlackAmericana Fest colors and font.
FESTIVAL LINEUP POSTER
I was tasked with designing the official 2024 festival poster. This was the first design created for the entire festival. To have a festival, you need to let the people know what to expect. The information that I needed to include was:
The name of the festival
The lineup of artists playing
create a look for the brand of the festival
The location (The Broadside)
The Date (September 28th)
The Price (FREE)
The sponsors of the festival
I decided to lean in to the use of our main colors as heavily as possible. I think it was important to associate these colors with the festival. I wanted to heavily feature Mecca’s logo design too and thought it should be the center of the design. The hardest challenge was to fit all of the names in a pleasing way. For the title I went with a new font to help stand out more against the use of the brand font. I went with the font “Funtastic” because it stood out more as a title. There was numerous revisions throughout the process and ended up being the most time consuming aspect.
PAPER+DIGITAL WIREFRAMES
To get a perfect understanding of how I wanted the website to be, I decided to create a mockup in FIGMA. I started with paper wireframes and sketches to get me a general understanding of how I wanted the tabs and pages to be laid out. I wanted to consolidate all of the different actions you could take on the website. This process was helpful to get the navigation organized. I then translated these to create digital wireframes.
