In late 2013 I was presented with an exciting opportunity - the promoters of Nova Rock, Austrias largest Rock Festival was celebrating its 10th anniversary, and where looking to up their game with a new style, stronger graphics and also putting effort into improving their festival area. Having already worked on designs for related festivals for my agency, Volume Media, I was asked to give the event a compelling and familiar new face.
This was pretty special to me already, as it happened to be the very event where I first experienced the energy of thousands of people, vibing with the music that shapes what I draw and think, over 8 years before that, when I was a teenager. Nova Rock is also special in another way: while most festivals are based around some kind of infrastructure, Nova rises as a small town out of nowhere every year a few km from the hungarian border. The closest town Nickelsdorf is well away from the events location, the "Pannonia Fields", so any kind of structures needed have to be built on the spot. For the 2014 anniversary, a 150m long path joining the two festival stages was first to be fenced and decorated to become an attraction.
Flanked by 14 towers that would each present a 4x4m area for artwork, and with over 300m of hoarding banner to be decorated, I soon started to become discontent with populating this huge area of printed artwork with the now suddenly very limited world of my poster designs - and with names like Iron Maiden & Black Sabbath lining up for the jubilee, I was very quickly drawn to the idea of having it become a kind of little "Broadway Of Rock", making it an homage to the gifted minds that would visit each year to bring the sound that shaped generations. In the following the main stage was also extended by 2 arches on each side, adding a whopping 14x14m area of pure illustration area to the structure, that would then be used for visuals in the night.
After finding great acclaim and setting up for a second round in 2015, I teamed up with the awesome people at Volume Media to extend the concept onto a fully redesigned area, which would see both stages become oppulently decorated, displaying huge illustrations during the day and lightning up in thematic visual sets after dark. Hugely excited to see the location we styled for the third time now in 2016, it's a good time to sit back a moment and look at all the small things...
