ART BLANCHE: Sasquatch! Music Festival
The Sasquatch! Music Festival in Washington state has been around since 2002 and featured everyone from Jane’s Addiction to Kendrick Lamar. As the years have gone along, Sasquatch! has evolved from a one-day festival with a handful of acts to a multi-day affair that features over 100 different performances.
Two variations of Aaron’s poster for Sasquatch! 2013 (Courtesy of Aaron Draplin)
In 2013, designer Aaron Draplin was tasked with creating the poster for that year’s festival, in which he would have to detail the 100+ artists that were to perform all in one design. If that alone wasn’t enough, Aaron was following in the footsteps of his friend Dom Clark from the Seattle-based design studio, Invisible Creature, and knew he had big shoes to fill.
“I’m a big fan of Dom and Invisible Creature,” Aaron said. “Those guys are buddies and we’ve done things over the years and just know each other, they’re just friends, great guys… [They’re] just incredibly, incredibly creative.”
One of Invisible Creature’s posters for Sasquatch! (Courtesy of Invisible Creature)
Artistically, the challenge of this project was to create something that fit in Sasquatch’s visual scheme while doing so in a fresh and exciting way. The problem there is that pretty much all festival posters tend to follow the same formula: a giant list with bigger bands up top, smaller bands on the bottom. It doesn’t leave that much room to get crazy with it.
“Well, like anything, the name of the game for a big rock festival poster is hierarchy, you know?” explained Aaron. “When you’re the Foo Fighters your name is going to be bigger than Fruit Bats. That’s just all there is to it.”
Two variations of Aaron’s poster for Sasquatch! 2013 (Courtesy of Aaron Draplin)
While dissecting some of the past Sasquatch! posters, Aaron noticed a pattern: the posters would feature a big illustration at the top, followed by the roster of bands below.
“So my first inkling was just to say: How can we do this differently? How can we make, I dunno, whoever was the big name that year -- Macklemore, or whatever it was, The Postal Service, or Elvis Costello -- well those will still be big but it will be a little bit different vessel,” he explained. “That’s really all that it is.”
The answer he came up with: merging the illustration and the roster together, into one cohesive unit.
“It could have been the shape of the gorge -- which is the gorge at George, Washington -- it could have been the shape of Bigfoot or a big foot. It could have been the shape... there’s all kinds of ways to attack that thing,” he said. “But it was just sorta a little bit different twist on it [than] being all about another great Invisible Creature graphic and then this little roster along the bottom -- that’s all.”
Aaron and his poster at Sasquatch! (Courtesy of Aaron Draplin)
“There’s a lot of ways to do these things, and that’s what the thinking was there: To do this fun little bit of different typography, and then a new way to have the hierarchy in place -- something a little different,” he added. “I don’t even know if it worked well, maybe it did. I hope it did.”
-Dylan Singleton