Saddles 'n' Spurs brand

Categories:

Brand & Logo Design, Animated Promo Video, Booklet Design, Layout Design 

Brief: 

Branding plays a big role in how well consumers recognize a brand. For this project, I created a conceptual festival idea for Illinois State University and the corresponding brand identity for said festival. If you know me at all, you know I love traveling, and one of my favorite places to visit is the western half of the United States. For this project, I created a Wild West themed festival for the Normal community.

Concept: 

After a lot of back and forth on a name, I decided to go with Saddles ‘n’ Spurs as a play on the typical cowboy gear found in the west. Saddles ‘n’ Spurs would be a week-long family-friendly festival celebrating the artistry and sport of the wild west. There would be a “main street” filled with vendors showcasing their crafts, such as a wagon-maker, blacksmith, wood-carver, turquoise and silver jewelry-maker, potter, a mining for “gold” station, glass-blowing station, candy-maker, soap-maker, candle-maker, and we can’t forget about all of the food vendors.

Events would include a pie-eating contest, a “Night on the Prairie” where participants could spend the night under the stars with a campfire and a covered wagon or teepee (plus a guide who would tell good old campfire tales), a lassoing contest, tug-of-war, archery contest, a Meet Your Favorite Outlaws event, a Rodeo, a Chuckwagon & Musical Show, and star of the week, a Barn Dance featuring the Texas Two-Step, Square-Dancing, Line Dancing, and even a few slow dances for those folks who like that sort of thing. 

All of these events would be hosted by their corresponding ISU organizations and clubs. The dance would be hosted by the ISU Dance Teams. The sporting competitions would be hosted by the ISU Athletic Department, food trucks and vendors would be coordinated by the culinary program, and the various crafting events would be sponsored by the School of Art.

To visualize all of this fun and excitement for the whole family, I researched the west and all it has to offer, drawing inspiration from photos of cowboys, Native American textiles, and the turquoise jewelry so famed by the west. The resulting color palette combines neutrals with pops of color to unify every area the festival would offer. The west has a stereotype of what kind of typefaces are “western”, so I deliberately chose a unique rounded sans-serif typeface to separate this festival from typical western events. I brought in a more typical western typeface to use in accent typography. To unify every piece of collateral, I created a standard of wide blocky-stripes that covered everything from the bottom edge of the booklet to the edges of the poster to the lanyard vendor passes. This element helped to create a cohesive identity throughout the brand. In total, this brand encapsulates everything good and exciting about the Wild West, and brings it all home in an affordable, family-friendly event for everyone to enjoy.