1000 word evaluation - Enterprise of Graphic Communication
For this module of Enterprise of Graphic Communication we had to create the concept and visual identity for a Festival.
When the brief was launched I was really excited about the idea of creating the concept of my own festival since I’m a true music addict and a festival-goer. Music summer festivals are also a very popular thing back in Portugal, my country: we have the perfect sunny summery weather plus we have great international artists and bands coming there in a much more affordable version than in the UK. Prices usually range from 80€-150€ for a 3 to 4 days festival that includes camping in beautiful natural landscapes.
This module kicked off with a discussion in class that was crucial to incite the critical thinking for the whole project. The question that was asked was “Why do we listen the music we do? I’ve never really gave much thought to this. I’ve never been the person that listened to just one music genre. If I look closely into my playlists, I have a wide range of artists and genres in it, starting from indie to rock, rap, pop, house disco, techno, jazz. Through the discussion, I realised everyone has that one favourite music genre that would be the one in which each one of us review ourselves the most.
The beginning of this module got me in a time that I’m growing a big interest in Electronic Dance Music and in addition Ally’s perspective lecture on Rave culture, I headed my research more to this genre. I watched the documentary “Summer of Rave 1989” which allowed me to understand better the background and values inherent to this genre.
At this point I wanted to do a festival to bring back the concept of raves in its early start. I thought the festival name to be “Ravival” – the revival of the raves. Proceeding with my research I watched the movie “24 hour party people” which gave me much more insight about the way different genres influence and generate other sub-genres. This film introduced me the the musical and cultural movement Manchester was going through in the late 1980s: a merge of alternative rock with the acid house emerging rave cuture scene, bringing influences from psychedelia an 1960s pop.
My research lead me to an hesitation: would it be better to create a whole festival concept on this new crush I had on the rave scene and EDM or, bringing back the question raised in the class discussion, to grab the genre and cultural background that I reviewed myself the most: psychedelic/alternative rock, the Hippie and 70’s vibe. So, at last, I came up with a concept that pleased me the most: a neo-psychedelic / alternative rock music summer festival with a psychedelic theme.
For the development of visual concept, taking Martin’s suggestion; I created an album on Pinterest as a moodboard for the festival and to get inspiration to create my logo.
Psykick was the name it came up, inspired in the consumption of LSD, the drug associated with psychedelic rock, standing the Kick for the sensory experience triggered by it.
For Psykick concept progress I took some bits of other Festival’s concept and visual identity:
In terms of concept I wanted to grab the values and structure of Woodstock: festival-goers camping in the Nature surrounded by a shared sense of Peace & Love.
In terms of visual I looked into a few European festivals:
Bestival, Uk (Dorset, England)
Boom Festival (Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal)
I also looked into some artwork of a few artists, but the ones that inspired me the most in this project was:
Peter Max is an american artist known for the bright colours and psychedelic style artwork. His work is iconic in the cultural literacy of the 1960s and 70s and we can see all over it a message of Peace & Love and the Hippie influence. To my project I bring Peter’s influence in the colour palettes, using more the shades of orange and violet
Hattie Stewart: Hattie is a illustrator and artist based in London. Her characteristic style of doodlebomb which gives a jolly and psychedelic effect making a great use of a bright colour palette
For the festival’s visual elements I created a few trees, mushrooms and tents. In these tree elements I try to convey the Nature element, the Mushrooms as a staple element for this musical background and a few tents to pass the image of human interaction with nature.
This festival’s target audience is 20 - 28 years old , more alternative crowd, adventurers & backpackers. It is going to be a 3 day festival, from 20 to 22 of July. For the location I picked Tabernas Desert, in Almeria, Spain because I wanted it to be in a warm climate in a natural landscape of yellow and orange.
To come up with the festival line-up I took inspiration from Spotify, which is a great tool to find specific music genres and music related to specific artists and bands.
I found very useful for this module talking to people with specific expertise in some areas. I reached to my final location speaking to my archaeologist cousin. For the line-up research I also spoke to a few friends music connoisseurs.
Definitely this was a positive aspect of this module, I used a lot of the feedback I got from my colleagues people I talked to in specific areas. Discussion is very important to flow an idea generation.
This module was also very important for me to enhance my critical thinking and curiosity on different cultural movements that I had no insight on before.
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