PITCHFORK
MUSIC
FESTIVAL
SPRING 2024 // GRAPHIC DESIGN + VISUAL IDENTITY
Music’s underground meets The Underground.
Every year across London’s music venues, Pitchfork organizes a city-wide festival to showcase a variety of artists. To match the brand’s primarily online existence, I developed a visual identity that aims to boost visibility for the festival and the quality journalism that Pitchfork is known for.
DEVELOPMENT
TREND ANALYSIS
To start, I identified the trend of popup campaigns, particularly from two different perspectives: from a marketing perspective, and from a music artist’s perspective. From an artist’s view, popup events give fans a new way of interacting with music and give them more tangible ways of connecting. From the marketing perspective, I used the New York Times as an example. In 2023, they took over a train station in New York and transformed it into a branded experience that advertised their brand houses (see here).
These perspectives gave me good insights on how to create an effective campaign that increases engagement with new and existing audiences.
INSPIRATION + STYLE
When developing the visual identity, I knew that I wanted to push myself past the more minimal aesthetics that I typically steer toward. As a result, much of the visual inspiration that I pulled from the project was very colorful, had a good deal of texture, and strayed away from traditional grid structures.
I found myself listening to a lot of house and electronic music as well. A lot of the visuals around these albums have the graphic style that I was aiming for, which added a new layer to my understanding of the design style.
COMPONENTS
Based on the more textured visual style that I had laid out in the mood board, I began looking for a typeface that fit the style. I decided on VISUAL by AllCaps Type (see here); the pixelated edges of the characters plays into the glitchy and maximalist effect that I was looking for. When considering motion graphics as well, the pixelated edges complimented the glitch effects.
The palette for the campaign is composed of bright, punchy, contrasted colors that are slightly abrasive and eye-catching. The imagery is strongly tied to the palette, as all images used are desaturated and then have a color applied. Using various blending modes, the gritty textures on the image mixed with the typeface create an ample amount of noise.
Mood board used for inspiration to create the visual identity, including typefaces, color palettes, and grid systems
A detailed look at the VISUAL typeface by AllCaps Type Foundry
A detailed view of a sample advertisement, showcasing high contrast colors and textured imagery.
MOCKUPS / TOUCHPOINTS
The London Underground is the perfect location for the campaign for two reasons, the first being the high volume of people at any given time increases exposure. Second, many artists featured in Pitchfork could fall under into “underground scene” in music.
For digital formats, I used existing digital billboards across the London Underground. Using specs from Global Group— an advertising group who designs these billboards— I made both static and dynamic versions of these ads.
Print formats included a series of fly-posters that showcase the vibrant and bold lineup.
The main design initiative took the form of a train car wrap, which boldly features the headlining artists and the festival lineup. Motion was a major consideration when designing this and I had to ensure that the wrap looked enticing both in motion and at a stand still.
