summerfest research

Project Brief:

The goal of this project is to develop a mark and identity system for the Summerfest Concerts, a professional chamber music ensemble.

1. What is the single purpose of your company?

Summerfest, Inc. aims to enrich the cultural life of Kansas City through musical performance in order to foster interaction between musicians and their audience.

2. Who is my target audience?

The greater Kansas City, with aims to expand their demographics.

3. What does the audience expect to get out of the Summerfest?

A great musical and cultural experience.

4. What are my companies core values?

A strong local presence, creative integrity, maintaining a tight following or community, and strengthening the culture of Kansas City through good music.

5. What are the long-term goals?

Broadening their audience with a larger, more diverse crowd

6. What can distinguish Summerfest from any competitors?

Emphasis on local audience concentration and community

7. Complete brand attributes chart.

- informal 1 [2] 3 4 5 formal
- intimate 1 2 3 4 [5] public

- classic 1 2 3 [4] 5 modern

- shiny 1 2 3 [4] 5 matte

- cool 1 2 3 [4] 5 formal

- child 1 2 [3] 4 5 adult

- expansive 1 2 3 [4] 5 focused

- feminine 1 2 [3] 4 5 masculine

- need 1 2 3 [4] 5 desire

- expensive 1 2 3 [4] 5 affordable

- loud 1 [2] 3 4 5 quiet

- sophisticated 1 [2] 3 4 5 naive

- organic 1 [2] 3 4 5 industrial

- urban [1] 2 3 4 5 rural

- edgy 1 [2] 3 4 5 reserved

- regional [1] 2 3 4 5 national/global

- sexy 1 2 3 4 [5] gender neutral

- smart 1 [2] 3 4 5 basic

8. Create Associated word list

spirit, unity, grounded, fun, creativity, variety, diversity, community, local, warm, welcome, modern, contemporary, comfort, enjoyment, open, relaxed, urban, specific, public

Successful Logos:

sign, index, and symbol

Sign: any object, action, event, pattern, etc., that conveys a meaning.

• Verbal signs: When a woman says, "I don't care" to any proposition that you make, they actually do care.
• Visual signs: A crossed out cigarette is a universal indicator for prohibited smoking

Index - something used or serving to point out; a sign or token.

• Verbal index: Pronunciations of certain words can indicate a particular geographic location or group
• Visual index: A sneering facial expression shows feelings of disgust or disagreement

Symbol - something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something, often something immaterial; emblem, token, or sign.

• Verbal symbol: Sarcasm, given a particular inflection of the voice, clues to an ironic context of the statement said.
• Visual Symbol: the symbol of Mars, denotes a male human being

What makes a successful bookjacket?

This is an unsuccessful jacket in my humble and honest opinion. While the image of the soccer ball with flags is an interesting concept that reflects the universal appeal of the sport, the size comparisons of each body of type makes the hierarchy weak and the overall design unappealing.

Minimalism at its finest. I find this to be a successful cover because it draws focus to the iconic single light in an interrogation scene. What is also quite nice is the use of typographic color. The title is white, and with its given proximity to the lightbulb can allude to the reaction of light, making the title an object in the scene. The authors name reflects the same theory, as it is further from the bulb and darker than the title. With this execution the design is clear, concise, unified and well executed.

Simplistic and successful type-based solutions tend to be few and far between. This cover is successful to me because of the cleverness of the upside-down orientation of the title. It plays on topic by manipulating the physics of readability. Not only that, the sizing of the type makes the hierarchy clear and sound. 

book cover preliminaries

*Book One: 

1. Ender's Game
2. Orson Scott Card - Born in 1951 in Washington and raised on the west coast, Orson Scott Card attended Brigham Young University and spent two years as a Mormon missionary Brazil. Highly influenced by his Mormon upbringing, in his introduction to Ender's Game Card mentions that Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy inspired him to write science fiction. He claims that in high school he was fascinated by military strategy and especially the crucial role that a leader plays in an army. The idea of the Battle Room, the game around which the novel Ender's Game is organized, came to him when he was sixteen years old, but he did not begin to write the story until years later. Since Card came up with the basic concept of the book at such a young age it is not surprising that his young characters have considerably more penetrating thoughts and complex emotions than children in most other stories. This emphasis on children is one that Card very consciously molded, and he states that one of his goals was for everyone to have to see things from their point of view.
3. Lost Boys, The Abyss, Robota
4. Set in Earth's future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind who have barely survived two conflicts with the Formics (an insectoid alien race also known as the "Buggers"). In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world's most talented children, including the novel's protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room where Ender's tactical genius is revealed.
5. isolation, mechanics, darkness, space, inhumanity, depression, deprivation, separation, maturity, games, dichotomy, identity
6. Amidst the manipulation of outside forces, it is questioned whether one can preserve what makes them individual.
7. Andrew "Ender" Wiggin  - chosen to eventually lead humanity's efforts against an alien menace.
8. Formics or "buggers" - Alien race that has invaded Earth twice nearly wiping out humanity and is feared to invade a third time.
9. - "Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you."
   - "I am not a happy man, Ender. Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it."
10. I would like to design a cover that emphasizes the human element of the book rather than the technology that past covers have done.

Book Two:

1. Things Fall Apart
2. Chinua Achebe - Raised by Christian parents in the Igbo town of Ogidi in southeastern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship for undergraduate studies. He became fascinated with world religions and traditional African cultures, and began writing stories as a university student. After graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service and soon moved to the metropolis of Lagos. Achebe's novels focus on the traditions of Igbo society, the effect of Christian influences, and the clash of values during and after the colonial era. His style relies heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines straightforward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory.
3. Anthills of the Savannah, A Man of the People, Arrow of God
4. The novel depicts the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion in Umuofia—one of a fictional group of nine villages in Nigeria, inhabited by the Igbo ethnic group. In addition it focuses on his three wives, his children, and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Igbo community during the late nineteenth century.
5. struggle, change, tradition, masculinity, difference, fire, locusts, colonialism, family, ignorance, influence, religion
6. When society begins to change there is a question as to whether or not the change presented is an improvement.
7. Okonkwo - a prominent village leader who has met many successes in his lifetime, but is challenged by the growing European influence
8. Europeans - following the colonization of Nigeria, various European characters attempt to convert the native Nigerians to their customs.
9. - "Turning and turning in the widening gyre
   The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
   Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
   - “Does the white man understand our custom about land?” “How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
10. Colonialism and Postcolonialism tend to be interesting genres for me to read. I'm also interested in the visual elements of African tribes and would like to try and reflect that in my designs

Book Three:

1. Invisible Man
2. Ralph Ellison - Lauded for his brilliance as a writer of modern fiction, Ralph Ellison has produced works that continue to have a profound impact on the understanding of race and social thought in the United States. His often surrealistic images reveal how people—despite their diverse geographic, racial, or social backgrounds—share a universal “common humanity.” Ellison’s early years as a classically trained musician and jazz trumpeter taught him to approach “the arts analytically.”When he sidelined music to take up writing in the late 1930s, he embarked upon a career that took him from obscurity to national fame. His 1952 novel Invisible Man is considered a masterpiece of modern literature and has been translated into fourteen languages around the world. A fiction writer, essayist, and educator, Ellison spent the last decades of his life at conferences and college campuses lecturing on the value of art and its ability to explore the complex relationships of the human experience.
3. Shadow and Act, Going to the Territory, Juneteenth
4. The narrator, an unnamed African American man who considers himself socially invisible, tells of his life in the present, looking back into his past. Thus, the narrator has hindsight in how his story is told, as he is already aware of the outcome. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
5. racism, individuality, identity, manipulation, marxism, stereotype, blindness, invisibility, jazz, allusion, Harlem, america
6. Change in culture and politics can be achieved by even the smallest and minute parties, whether others are aware of it or not.
7. The Narrator - An African-American man who joins a political group, known as the Brotherhood, uses his oratory skills to attempt to improve things for the society in Harlem.
8. Ras the Exhorter - A radical black nationalist who embodies the fears for future of the civil rights battle in America of the narrator.
9. - “Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through.”
   - "And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man."
10. As corny as it sounds, this book was quite moving emotionally. If I could translate the struggles and tribulations of the main character onto the cover that would be pretty neat.