Context: The Creative Bravery Festival was formed during lockdown as a space for educators, learners and creative thinkers to come together and reimagine the future of education. The festival ran online from the 21st - 27th September and featured a wide variety of inspiring talks and events.
Challenge: Create a vibrant identity for the festival which reflects its forward-thinking, community driven ethos, and produce related promotional content to get people excited about the festival. Also design a virtual 'field' for the festival to take place within.
Festival Organisers: Brave Collective
Branding: Gemma Gorton
Illustrations: Gemma Gorton
Social Media Content: Gemma Gorton
Website Design: Emil Blum
Branding: Gemma Gorton
Illustrations: Gemma Gorton
Social Media Content: Gemma Gorton
Website Design: Emil Blum
Creating a brand identity: When developing the branding concept for the festival I thought about what being creatively brave really looks like. It's very rare that coming up with a brave idea is as simple as going from A to B. In reality, the creative process is often messy, unpredictable, and most of all, human.
This chaotic, wiggly line became a key part of the final logo design. I combined this with my own hand-lettering to give the brand a handmade, approachable feel.
In the final logo the wiggly line weaves in and out of the lettering to give it a dynamic effect.
Because all creative journeys and processes are different, I also animated the logo to feature lots of different wiggly lines to represent the diversity of the creative process.
I created the piece below as an introduction to what it means to be creatively brave. Using statements from the festival's mission, I created a hand-lettered piece which sums up what the festival is all about.
As the project progressed we wanted to create more lettering pieces, so we decided to create a custom typeface to be used across the brand. I scanned in, tidied up and vectorised each letter and then used Fontself to create a fully functioning typeface.
We used the typeface for lots of elements, including the Brave Stories - examples of creative bravery submitted by festival participants and showcased on the festival's social media and website.
Designing the Field: The final challenge was to design a virtual venue for the festival. Despite being online, we still wanted the festival to feel immersive and exciting - like somewhere you'd want to visit, even if it was just on your laptop.
I went through many iterations to create the final festival 'field'. Inspired by festival grounds, it is set against a night sky to give it a magical, surreal quality.
Coloured 'light' in the festival brand colours spills out of each area to represent the festival's creative energy.
The final result is an immersive virtual space which visitors are excited to explore.
Promotional material: I also created a series of promotional videos and a selection of instagram content ahead of the festival launch.
The loose illustrative style, hand lettering and vibrant colour palette are continued across all the promotional elements to give them a visual unity.
A series of promotional gifs were also created & shared on the festivals social media in the run up to the launch.
