Behind the Scenes: Figment Branding
MSLK recently completed rebranding local, non-for-profit, arts festival, Figment. Held annually on Governors Island in New York City, the festival encourages people to find their inner artist and participate in any way imaginable.
The immediate task was to create a poster and supplementary materials for this year’s festival. In the process, we developed a simple yet flexible system for Figment to use in years to come that would help strengthen their identity and presence and still allow them to tap into a new creative theme each year. Read more about our process and see the results after the jump.
MSLK first identified a lack of visual structure as the main challenge for Figment. Every year they enlisted the help of a different artist or designer to develop materials. The result was something totally new and different every year. Below are some of the various incarnations that the identity has taken over the past couple years.
It’s hard enough for the public to recognize a brand that they see everyday, but when that brand is only visible once a year, it’s especially important to be consistent. We developed the visual of a thought bubble originating from the logo and tagline to provide the structure that will carry through from year to year. It represents the key positioning of Figment as a festival where everyone is encouraged to participate in any way imaginable. They can still use artists and designers every year to populate the content within the thought bubble, but the overarching structure will strengthen their public presence from year to year.
From there we embarked on developing the look and feel of this year’s design. Rather than focusing on a specific theme, we wanted this inagural design to represent the idea of Figment. To highlight the participatory element and the whimsical nature of the event, we created illustrations of different activities and words. We then put Governors Island at the center to emphasize the location.
We produced the designs in three different gradients, so when hung together, they felt dynamic and not repetitive. From there, the graphic was applied to all sorts of materials from tshirts to postcards to the website.
There was one additional twist to the project. One of the big components of the festival is a mini-golf course, where each hole is designed by a different artist. They needed a call for entries that felt in-line with the new figment identity, but also spoke to this separate initiative. We picked up on the visual language of the talk bubble and created a poster that can be used either with or separate from the main poster.
Figment hits Governor’s Island next weekend. Hope to see you there, as we debut our art project, Watershed!
Overall I think this is a good idea and solid execution, but I’m not sure the tagline works. I like the questions that engages, but it actually puzzles me a bit, and for people that haven’t heard of the festival, it doesn’t identify it as a festival or what it is about. Even if meant to be esoteric, perhaps the question “What will you become?” (or an iteration expressed more elegantly) would suggest more of a benefit by promising a transformative experience for the participant.
By: Howard Levy on June 9, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Great work. Love it. Like how the thought-bubble concept is 100% ownable. And to be honest, the tagline doesn’t bother me at all. Being in the Midwest, sure, it’s a bit unclear to me what you’re asking the “consumer” to do. But given that this is a festival that locals are already familiar with, I think it works well. Great stuff as always. Hope all is well out east.
By: Jon Franko on June 10, 2009 at 8:49 am
I loved the look, tagline and overall campaign… the illustrations in the bubble not only convey all the different ways to participate but they also represent all the different personalities that will be involved… extending the color palette also helps communicate how universal the program is, and lastly, the tagline works for me because it is a call to action, and without participation, there is no Figment!
By: J to the D on June 11, 2009 at 2:33 pm
It was great to see that how the thought bubble was used by the Figment team for informational signage on the ferries, as well as the directional signage. The (literal) idea was to utilize the thought bubble in innovative ways. As J says, participation is the lifeblood of organization, which was leveraged for the identity as a whole.
By: Marc on June 19, 2009 at 10:23 pm