The birth of Rusyn festival

The birth of Rusyn festival
January–May 2013

Goal

— introduce the brand of new Rusyn festival in North-Eastern Slovakia

Project Scope

— brand strategy & design (competitive reserch & analysis, archetype, voice & tone development, logotype and visual identity design)

— online & offline media strategy, design & management

— content management (IA, content retrieval, editing and writing)

Results

— over 8000 people visited, performed at or participated in the week-long festival

Story

At the beginning of 2013, the chairman of District organisation of Rusyn Renaissance shared the idea of creating Rusyn festival with me. Since I have always dreamed of establishing festival in my hometown I have fallen for the idea instantly and offered to take care of the whole brand & communication (despite knowing it would be a tough undertaking — creating and managing the brand over numerous channels on top of my day job in another country). Together with the help of other professionals and supportive media partners, we have managed to introduce the brand among targeted audiences just in few months, with a gradual online & offline media engagement.

New Rusyn festival has taken place in Svidník (Slovakia) from May 20th till May 26th, 2013. People had a chance to experience various cultural events, ranging from art exhibitions, theatre plays, film screenings and talks, to new Rusyn alternative music and folklore performances. The aim of new Rusyn festival was to establish an open platform for sharing a culture and heritage of Rusyns and other minorities of Slovak republic in a variety of culture forms.

Credits

client — Okresná organizácia Rusínskej obrody (District organisation of Rusyn Renaissance)
brand & visual identity, communication & media partnership management, web IA, UX & QA —Branislav Šandala
back-end & front-end web development — Matúš Duchoň

content writer & social media manager— Vlado Šandala

online ads, billboard & public radio consultancy — Mega & Loman
web — www.rusinskyfestival.sk

The logotype and the main portrait of Rusyn festival

I am often using the paper to ideate, communicate or validate my design assumptions. In the photo above, you can see logotype early sketches & printed variants, bulletin rapid prototype, t-shirt design prototype, and early website sketches.

In search for the logotype of the festival's brand I was looking for symbol that would be distinctive from European folklore and mainstream festivals, various culture organizations (like museums) and international Rusyn organizations. The easy-to-remember symbol of radially symmetric flower is encircled as the circle can convey many meanings such as family circle, circle of friends around the table, the tradiotional Rusyn dancing in circles or even lifecycle of many Rusyns that are working all around the world and yet still have the urge to return or are returning to their home country. I've chosen the type from PT Sans family, which has a solid support of cyrillic character set and works well across different offline and online media.

The floral pattern of different color variations accompanies the visual identity of the festival.

Design of the desktop and mobile version of the official Rusyn festival website. As the website is always being updated with respect to users' feedback and further needs of the festival, check out the current version at www.rusinskyfestival.sk

The official poster for Rusyn festival 2013. It was desirable to include the programme information at the bottom of the poster, since many people in villages across North-Eastern Slovakia still favor more to read a poster on local information board (usually near bus stops), since they don't always have the internet connection.