This year, we wanted to take a bit of time out to explain the design process behind our branding – this year gifted by Marion from Intelligent Deviants with support from Bruce from Comms & Cinebrah.
The theme “Phoenix” initially started with a call out to the community. They were asked to provide their thoughts as to what our theme should be and submit some information. This year we wanted more than just a name, we wanted to understand our ‘why’. Those submissions were then narrowed down to a small handful and the community voted. Phoenix became a clear winner with both our membership and community.
From here Marion took the design process on to develop our main icon.
Early in the process it was clear that the design itself needed to feel that it broke free from the typical ‘burning bird’ theme. Blazing Swan is not a typical event, and our branding and logos for the event shouldn’t feel typical either.
So instead a more ‘neon and mech’ feeling design was approached.
The neon and mech elements have been used to echo this event’s focus on the future as well as feeling more connected to the style of our event, theme camps and art.
Whilst we are never going to hit a design that encompasses absolutely everyone and everything at Blazing Swan we felt like this design really felt at home in our community.
With the iconography complete, Bruce took the branding further;- providing complementary background, pairing fonts and a range of brand colours that would help a cohesive design feel.
The fonts again help echo the futurist feel, with the angles in the background providing a ‘moving forward’ feel that help the viewer look to progression. The colours were selected on a complementary feel of each other – this is reflective of our event’s purpose;- to ‘band together’ to rebuild Blazing Swan.
Typically our designs process is a little less planned, we hope this year we believe we have developed a more cohesive and well-planned design which is indicative of the process our event and association continues to make.
