Poster series to spark engagement with the RISING Festival, stretching the brand for creative exploration
the brief
The RISING Festival is a key part of the Melbourne/Naarm festival scene. Its visual art, installations, performances, and live music is beautifully integrated with the daily movements of people in public spaces. This personal project is an expression of gratitude for our city's vibrant arts scene.
The brief
I briefed a set of posters that were on-brand but had room for creative exploration. They could easily exist together or independently. I briefed both a portrait and landscape size for ROCK posters, banners, billboards, and backlits to vary the placements around the CBD. The main colour to keep front-of-mind was the RISING blue violet. The copy I briefed was simple, with a short tagline, "Music, art, and culture under moonlight" and dates.
constraints
Audience
The demographic for the festival is broad – families, couples, individuals of all ages and backgrounds, people from the city, Australia, and overseas – and each event is unique and appeals to different audiences.
Context
In marketing terms, this would be artwork rolled out well before the festival hits, early in the campaign as an initial touchpoint for audiences. It serves as a reminder and has an anticipatory nature – a visual "mark your calendars".
process
Concept development & festival research
First, I researched the festival's development from Melbourne Festival, its past events and reviews online. While I have seen branded artwork around the city before, I avoided actively researching previous posters or assets to prevent being influenced by them. Personally, I enjoy the blend of elegance and modernity the RISING brand achieves. After researching how eclectic the festival's attractions were, I decided to lean more into the art itself in an attempt to stretch the branding.
My visual priority became defined: raise awareness about each event category while also igniting curiosity, amplifying excitement, and ultimately being an initial touchpoint for ticket sales and attendance.
Art direction & building a system
I defined my own type hierarchy and colours for the festival based on its current brand as the fonts used by RISING are paid fonts. I chose Portrait and Söhne Mono after researching similar alternatives.
For each poster, I decided to feature the categories of the festival through feeling and movement – music, dance, community – with a focal point on iconic sites or features of Melbourne / Naarm.
In order to develop the feeling I wanted to create, I hopped onto Pinterest and created a mood board for inspiration. Then, I sketched out different designs and explored a bit on paper before getting into Photoshop.
Design
Each poster had to be stand alone, but also work in a set in any sequence. That meant repeating elements or patterns that work with various sequencing or layouts (as you often get with ROCK posters).
I gathered high quality free-to-use images and collaged them in Photoshop, preparing a few iterations before choosing a direction I liked best. From the sketches to the final art, you can see that I first explored something more focused on the moon as a centre piece. However, I found that replicating a moonlit night with photographic images visually ineffective as there was too much detail and the artwork was too dark for a print medium. Also, featuring moon phases in the posters as a focal point felt too kitsch so I decided to make it more subtle. I didn't want to go down an illustrative path as I felt that the real-world experience of RISING is what makes it so appealing. In the end, I decided that layered images within silhouettes would better communicate the feeling of RISING.
As a final step, I placed the text elements over the collage in InDesign to prepare the posters for print and digital as required.
outcome
Overall, I enjoy the flow of energy that the posters emulate. They capture your attention and feature the brand in a recognisable way. It would be intriguing to seeing the artwork around the city.
