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18 Examples of Music Festival Branding Trends in 2018 - Tight Ship Design

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Music festival branding design survey of 2018 trends: color, typography, imagery, identity and more from events happening around the world.

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Summer 2017 finds us in an interesting time for craft beer. On one side of the industry, one new brewery is still opening every single day across the United States. On another side, headline grabbing acquisitions are causing people to reexamine what it means to be "craft."

Our 2016 craft beer branding trends analysis featured a lot of design work that hinted at a brewery's authenticity (hand-rendered elements, kraft paper, nostalgic, by-gone aesthetics, etc.). Now, the idea of authenticity itself is more of an overarching ethos. Not that it always wasn't, but it's becoming more important than ever as big beer continues its lumbering creep into craft's personal space.

This manifests in many different ways; some subtle. Some not so subtle. And it's an interesting way to view craft beer branding because beyond the surface level visual aesthetics, you're able to see how someone is positioning themselves, and the story they're trying to tell.

For this year's review, we're digging into some of the more pervasive visual trends we've seen throughout 2017 and then touching on some non-visual industry undercurrents that are driving the aesthetics themselves.
ULTRA CLEAN & MINIMAL White space abounds
2017 has seen dozens, if not hundreds of breweries come to market with ultra clean branding and packaging. It seems as if we're in an arms race to create the most reductive, simplified cans and bottles possible. This look is signified with a large amount of white space, 1, or if you're feeling snazzy, 2 colors, maybe an icon and some typography.

This stands out on a busy, illustration and color-heavy beer shelf-for now. This look is becoming so common that it will likely become the norm in a few years prompting a shift back to busier, more complex and illustrated packaging (you heard it here first).

ULTRA CLEAN & MINIMAL: 1. Balter Brewing, 2. House Beer by COLONY, 3. Brücke Beer by Anna Salvador, 4. Wild Heaven Craft Beer by Alvin Diec, 5. Colonial Beer by Alter
PAINTERLY Swirly & colorful
Swirly and colorful, this aesthetic creates sophisticated packaging. We've seen it implemented to hint at the mercurial element of a beer itself (a hazy IPA or crazy Brett experiment, for example), and we've seen it used to speak to the artistic side of brewing. This stands apart from your run of the mill craft beer branding, generally speaking to a more experienced consumer.

PAINTERLY: 1. Upland Brewing by Young & Laramore, 2. Ballad Brewing by CODO Design, 3. Commonwealth Brewing by Thirst, 4/5. Vocation Brewery by Robot Food
PATTERNING A flexible constant
Patterning is a fun way of expanding your portfolio while not having subsequent releases look identical. Some breweries have embraced this for their flagship beers while most use it for specialty programs. You begin by creating certain constants-logo placement, beer name and style, TTB info, etc. Then, the background is completely up for grabs. This can be small and intricate or large and geometric. Either way, it's a lively way of standing out from the previously mentioned minimal and clean packaging that's beginning to dominate off-premise shelves.

PATTERNING: 1. Austin Beer Works by Helms Workshop, 2. Dank Candy by CODO Design, 3. Brown's Brewing by id29, 4. Lighthouse Brewing Co. by St. Bernadine
LAYERING Overlap-lap-lap
This is more of a design technique than a trend, proper, but we've seen it so much over the last year that we felt it was worth discussing. Layering is when you purposely overlap elements on your packaging-typography, color swaths, etc. to create a rich and interesting composition. This can have a vintage feel (drawing inspiration from Hatch Show Print-esque gig posters), or ultra contemporary (often being used in conjunction with the aforementioned Ultra Clean & Minimal aesthetic).

LAYERING: 1. Alias Beer by the Potting Shed, 2. Mount Pleasant Series by Resonance, 3. Strap Tank Brewery by Helms Workshop, 4. Transmitter Brewing by Jeff Rogers, 5. Braxton brewing by Durham Brand & Co.
DIE CUT Shapely & unique
While cans continue their march toward industry domination, bottles are seeing somewhat of a resurgence. We've heard a lot of reasons for this-bottling lines are relatively cheap and available, bottles are easier to come by in some cases, and there are still a lot of folks out there who view putting a well-made beer in a can as sacrilege.

For those who do use bottles, we're seeing a bigger focus on better materiality and die cut labels to stand out from other 'stock' offerings. This includes both bottle labels (standard and large format releases) and the carriers themselves. We're seeing more breweries budget for nicer paper labels (like Neenah's BELLA stock), specialty finishes and die cuts out of the gate.

DIE CUT: 1. Alias Beer by the Potting Shed, 2. Driftwood Brewery by Hired Guns Creative, 3. Printer's Ale Manufacturing Co. by CODO Design, 4. Children of the Bourbon Barrel by CODO Design, 5. ATOM Beers by Thirst
BEER AS ART Is it beer?
While primarily a European design trend, we're starting to see more American breweries embrace this playful, artistic, somewhat abstract approach to packaging. The label art uses loose and sketchy illustrations with large color swatches to eschew traditional indexes for beer packaging.

BEER AS ART: 1. Omnipollo by Karl Grandin, 2/4. Mikkeller by Keith Shore, 3. Biere des Marias by Anthony Cherbuin, 5. Masticamaro by ByVolume
SILVER & SHINY Addition through subtraction
It's a designerly trick to let some of the aluminum substrate come through on a can design (especially when printing digital sleeves). By leaving a bit of the design file clear, you effectively add another "color" to your can. This adds some nice dimension to the art and can even make it appear as though there's some metallic printing in the mix.

SILVER & SHINY: 1. Wild Heaven Beer by Gentleman, 2. Bronx Brewery by Tag Collective, 3. Sixpoint Brewery by Lefty Lexington, 4. Centerpoint Brewing Co. by CODO Design, 5. Due South Brewing Co. by StudioMax Design
FEMININE A softer touch
Turns out that there are a lot of women who enjoy craft beer. Turns out that women who enjoy craft beer enjoy great branding and storytelling as much as the bearded dude at the end of the bar. Turns out that a lot of breweries are embracing these ladies with open arms. And the more adroit breweries aren't just making their labels pink. Instead, they're using softer or poppy colors, fun illustrations, and even skewing toward beer styles that are more sessionable and amenable to a newer palate-rosé-inspired ales, farmhouse ales, etc.

FEMININE: 1. Charnwood Brewery by a Dozen Eggs, 2. Abadía Beer by TSMGO, 3. Golden Rey by Magnificent Beard, 4. Big Axe Brewing by Hip Street, 5. Kros Strain Brewing by CODO Design
ART DECO Here, have a scary angular eagle beer
We're not sure why this trend has come back into prominence-it could be tied to your brewery's building, your town's prevalent architecture, or even your brewery name. Or it could just be your own weird whims (hey man, I get it). Either way, we've seen a rise in Art Deco-inspired branding and packaging design throughout 2017.

This could even be driven by broader cultural happenings like a renewed interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Gatsby, the Man in the High Castle, and other classic literature.

ART DECO: 1/7. De Steeg Brewing by TILT, 2. Widmer Brothers by Sasquatch, 3. Goldhawk Craft Beer by Don't Try Studio, 4. Great Flood Brewing, 5/6. Fort Point Brewing Co. by Manual

Now let's look at some non-visual trends we've seen this year.
Healthy Beer Roller Blades + IPAs for days
People are more conscious of what they're eating and drinking than ever. And thanks to the Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, it's becoming more common for people to see how many calories are in their favorite local IPA (usually well over 200, FYI).

This revelation, along with craft consumers' open-armed embrace of lighter styles like pilsners have breweries creating more quaffable styles and even advertising beer on its-gasp-healthy merits. Over the next few years, you're going to start seeing some real deal breweries making "Lite" beer. And I bet it will sell like crazy.
New is the new best Out with the new, in with the newer
For many craft drinkers, it's impossible to keep up with new breweries and beer releases. There are just so many out there. So they bounce around and try new beers every time they go out-I'm guilty of this myself. This is great for the consumer, but not so great for the production brewery who wants you to buy a sixer (or three) of their flagship every week.

Across the country, breweries are adapting to this fickle and promiscuous drinker by regularly releasing new beers-often as an ephemeral, small batch offering. We're seeing this hit the streets as higher-priced 4 packs with gorgeous, collector-level design work that may or may not relate to the parent / flagship brand. Production-wise, this generally means a printed sleeve or pressure sensitive label since the goal, beyond making great beer, is getting it out at a quick enough pace to stay top of mind.
Line Extensions A safe-ish bet
New brand rollouts can be scarily expensive for any brewery, but more so for regional and national players. By the time you're through the package design process (including design fees, registering a new name trademark, printing thousands of cases / cans / bottles / etc.) and have planned your on and off-premise product launch, you can be looking at a staggering number.

And what's worse is that this can often be a bit of a gamble. New England IPAs are hot right now. Will they be hot a year from now? Uncertainty sets in and your mood darkens. Mystery abounds. "We can move 500,000 cans, right?"

But there's a solution. Line extensions! Your wildly popular flagship beer already occupies a solid place in your customer's hearts and minds. Rather than risk rolling out a completely new offering that may not land with your current fans, why not add a twist to an old favorite -maybe a different hop bill (Aussie hops are in right now), or a different yeast (throw some Brett in there), or maybe even give it some seasonal flair? You could even consider co-branding or collab-brewing to build on another established group's brand equity.

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Interested in branding your own brewery? Check out our comprehensive craft beer branding guide over at www.craftbeerbrandingguide.com

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2017 Craft Beer Branding Trends - CODO Design

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Summer 2017 finds us in an interesting time for craft beer. On one side of the industry, one new brewery is still opening every single day across the United States. On another side, headline grabbing acquisitions are causing people to reexamine what it means to be "craft."

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art deco

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The assignment was to create a visual identity for Victor Vasarely's "Optical Paintings", which was the main 2014 autumn exhibition at EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art. For the exhibit we wanted to create a visual identity that was deviant from tradition and gave the experience of optical art in itself.

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Opinion by Richard Baird.

Slet is a mass gymnastics event and union of schools that has its roots in the latter half of 19th century Prague with the intention of providing physical, moral and intellectual training for the nation. Slet takes its name from the Czech word for flocking of birds. This can be understood in the sight of a stadium field filled with participants exercising in union. Slet became Skol clubs and spread across the country, establishing strong relationships with gymnastic bodies internationally, particularly with those in France, a relationship that endures today.

Slet, which took place every six years, were also characterised by their strong visual identities. This was a critical part of the unifying nature of the occasion. This was often put in the hands of prominent artists of the time.

From its beginnings in the second half of the 19th century to the present, Slet has found itself caught amongst political agendas; suppressed or repurposed for propaganda, only to reclaimed. The event was revived during the Prague Spring of 1968, only to fade out and remerge again for the fourth time in 1990 and then in 1994 when 23,000 Skols participated.

in 2018 Slet once again returned for its 16th event. In the same spirit of its earliest events, visual identity was an essential component. Inspired by the complex movements and the diagrams of dots, lines and arrows that guided the gymnasts, Prague-based Studio Najbrt draws a sense of fun, energy and character from complexity. This runs across and links a variety of printed materials, these included posters, billboards, badges, t-shirts, stamps, bags, badges and a variety of merchandise.

The visual language of organised movement, be it in the sports arena or guiding artistic performance, is a familiar and recurring reference point and device in graphic and identity design. However, the approach here is not defined by its stylistic uniqueness; but by its historical and cultural context and relevance, in the way it exists between its formal socialist beginnings; the health and intellectual well-being of the nation and an expression of referential joyfulness today.
Slet, in its origins, in its suppression, appropriation and resurgence at very specific moments (1968 and 1990), sees it very much tied to time and cultural sentiment. That these events also had a strong relationship with the visual arts, a tool for tapping into and elevating a feeling, as well as its role within a sequence, is critical and essential to understanding the relevance of the concept.
The complexity and difficulty of recording and then communicating movement, which is then expected to happen in union, is amplified, beyond practicality, into a visual cacophony. There is a spirit here that, as someone who spent an extended period in the Czech Republic, sees as timely. That Studio Narbjt, who have found themselves in a unique spot; their work is very much part of Prague's visual landscape, often imposing moments of modernity and simplicity amongst the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque ornament of the urban topography, is not a surprise and very much in keeping with the symbolic and visceral nature of the event.

Stylistically the work clearly has its roots in the mid-century modern. Studio Najbrt mention Bauhaus and the legendary Czech designer Ladislav Sutnar. This can be seen in colour, spatial sensitivity, typographic modernity and diagrammatical play. There are some lovely moments where posters are presented together within the city, a wall of arrows, lines and dots, that amplify this theme of fun from function. While the essential components and foundation of the graphic work may not be unique, the quality of its execution, its balance and movement, the elevation of pragmaticism into a convivial absurdity, a clear continuity across all assets, as well as the sequential component and historical legacy marks this out.

Design: Studio Najbrt. Opinion: Richard Baird. Fonts Used: TBC.

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New Graphic Identity for XVIth All Sokol Slet '18 by Studio Najbrt - BP&O

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Opinion by Richard Baird. Slet is a mass gymnastics event and union of schools that has its roots in the latter half of 19th century Prague with the intention of providing physical, moral and intellectual training for the nation. Slet takes its name from the Czech word for flocking of birds.

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With crowds low and the average fan age high, we ask: Is jazz a dying art form?

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With crowds low and the average fan age high, we ask: Is jazz a dying art form?

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https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/with-crowds-low-and-the-average-fan-age-high-we-ask-is-jazz-a-dying-art-form-8929400.html

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Best Of Duke Silver - Parks and Recreation

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“most of our audience is basically white, middle-class [and] upper-class, elderly people. It’s cool, but that’s not what we want to do. In the next five years, we want to play to people our age.”

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Jazz is that music that no one’s expecting to go anywhere, and the musicians are just getting on with it.”

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‘What is the music that represents me today?’”

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https://www.statista.com/statistics/230919/listeners-of-jazz-programs-usa/

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Collection of Jazz posters from 50s and 60s

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Collection of Jazz posters from 50s and 60s

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We've been lucky enough to start working with Birmingham and Solihull Jazz Festival for this year's event, creating a new identity for them which will work across print and digital platforms. With a brief for such a prestigious event - England's longest established Jazz Festival - I knew immediately where I wanted to take inspiration from and quickly starting raiding the archives of posters and record covers for Jazz music from the 1950s and 1960s.

Developments in album cover artwork in the 1950s and 1960s was vast - an important sales tool for artists, designers were increasingly using imaginative photography and expressive typography to bolster the illustrative style of the previous decade. Album cover designers developed a reputation in their own right and some of the most iconic pieces of graphic design filtered into the nation's subconscious through this medium.

Below is just a collection of vinyl covers and posters which we've found in gathering inspiration for this new brand identity. They show the expressive nature of design which packaged the groundbreaking jazz music of the time. Colours are rich, shapes are bold, the feel of the music is portrayed in the design. You can see rhythm in the composition, it draws you in almost as if you are a participant of the music in that instant. Loose lines hint at the frenetic quality of the performance. The photography creates a connection, engaging directly with the musician. Even if you're not a jazz fan, it's a feast for the eyes...

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We've been lucky enough to start working with Birmingham and Solihull Jazz Festival for this year's event, creating a new identity for them which will work across print and digital platforms. With a brief for such a prestigious event - ... Read More

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‘Young musicians aren’t trying to satisfy the standards that were set by jazz in the past’

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https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/NEA-Research-Report-31.pdf

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Kamasi Washington, figurehead of the new jazz revival

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The LA sax player, whose album The Epic and work with Kendrick Lamar have made him the poster boy of the jazz revival, on why his cosmic music has made such a splash

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Heavy usage of yellow, blue and pinks

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As a self-proclaimed "almost musician" and jazz guitarist, Berlin-based graphic designer Slawek Michalt prefers - as most would - commissions that combine his passion and profession. "I love working on designs for musicians, electro-pop or jazz," he says. "For my approach, I work according to Miles Davis' quote: 'Don't play what's there, play what's not there.'"

One of his favourite projects was a series of posters for a jazz concert in Berlin, where an open brief led him to base the designs on sounds made by instruments. "I wrote down the sounds, like a cello, which sounds like 'pwff-foo-piu' or drums, which go like 'tzss-z-zz-tzss'; it was fun to use the onomatopoeia as well as the abstract illustration."

The posters combine eclectic typography with free-form shapes and lines to create busy compositions infused with a jazz feel.

Slawek runs his own graphic design studio as well as teaching at various art schools in Germany and China, while his client roster includes major institutions Berlinische Galerie and Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and smaller galleries such as Edition Block, and Italian design magazine domus.

He spent his early childhood in Poland before moving to Kassel, Germany, where he studied typography and graphic design under Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein, and feels his mixed background has influenced his current aesthetic. "In Poland in the early 80s I was surrounded by the colourful Polish posters and illustrations. Later on, when I grew up in Germany it was the Bauhaus design which affected me the most."

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Slawek Michalt's graphic design is inspired by the sounds and ethos of jazz

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As a self-proclaimed "almost musician" and jazz guitarist, Berlin-based graphic designer Slawek Michalt prefers - as most would - commissions that combine his passion and profession. "I love working on designs for musicians, electro-pop or jazz," he says.

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Sheet music for "Livery Stable Blues"/"Barnyard Blues" by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Leo Feist, Inc., New York, copyright 1917

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Morton published "Jelly Roll Blues" in 1915, the first jazz work in print.

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Series of Music Branding Events

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Slawek Michalt Studio for Visual Communi­cation Art Direction Typo­graphy

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Simon Uyterlinde

https://www.northseajazz.com/en/gallery/artposters/

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Jazz at the Philharmonic announcement, 1956

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Niels Hofsteenge

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Jazz Branding