There are many arts festivals all over the world but I wanted to look at ones within the UK for inspiration for existing festivals and fairs so that I could gather knowledge about how things are done within the UK design community.
The Frieze Art Fair is a festival that happens around October every year in London. This festival was created to celebrate living artists and show off contemporary creations to a range of viewers. The festival hosts over 170 galleries and artists, showing a unique and diverse range of artworks. As the selection of media and art genres is so broad the branding and promotion for the festival seems to lean more to being bold, minimalist and striking rather than creating anything overly complicated to sum up the event.
The main advertising posters which are viewable outside of the event are a solid blue colour with a minimal amount of text. The logo used on this poster is really interesting as the font is broken up by blue lines and to me almost resembles blocks fitting together to create the letters. This makes me think that the logo sums up the festival well as it is of course the works of various artists coming together to make something new. The logo also has some corner pieces to it, showing the boundary of the logo and giving the illusion of there being a box around it. The poster is very simple in itself but I think it is very striking and the minimalism draws the eye to the elements you want the viewer to focus on. The minimal text allows the information that is there to be bold and the forefront of the design. I will take this into account and on top of my collage designs will think carefully about the text that I am adding to my pieces to make sure the information is striking and important so no space is wasted.
The festival’s website follows a similar style to their posters, that being minimalism as the forefront of the design. The images seem to be carefully chosen to draw the eye and add some colour to the simplistic site. This puts the artwork itself in the forefront and makes it very eye catching. The website also seems to prioritise important information over much visual clutter. The art piece shown on this page is bright and colourful and catches the eye and is layered with important text.
The other festival I chose to look at is Brighton Festival. This is the largest art and cultural festival held in Brighton every year. Beginning in the late 1960’s this festival constantly works to become more diverse and ambitious with its featured artists every year. The festival hosts a range of artists from performance and music to traditional medias and is constantly working in collaboration to bring new forms of media and creators to the spotlight. The event hosts artists and performers from across the world but also works to promote the work of local artists as well.
The promotion for this festival seems to be focused on creating really recognisable and strong branding to make a memorable impression on the viewer. The logo is the forefront of the website with elements of it being used across the website. The pointed edges of the F logo can be seen in various parts of the website. The site also focuses on multimedia assets and there is a video showing interesting pieces and exhibitions from the event. The logo and the important text are layered over the top of this video. This feels like a form of collage within the site as it is layering different elements together with different media’s and it gives a really interesting effect as it is very bold and makes the viewer keep looking at it to see all of the pieces. The rest of their visual branding and promotion follows the same style of layering assets and the same bright pink colour scheme.
References:
Brighton Festival. (2021) About the Festival. [online] Available at: https://brightonfestival.org/about-the-festival/ [Accessed 12/11/2021]
Frieze. (2021). Frieze London | Frieze. [online] Available at: https://www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-london. [Accessed 12/11/2021]
Yoo.A. (2012). 10 Must-Visit Art Festivals Around the World. [online] Available at: https://mymodernmet.com/must-visit-art-festivals/. [Accessed 12/11/2021]