This project was created for the fictional Rock and Roll festival, Rock the Rock. The website design was developed to match a previously developed mood board based on the proposed target market sought. The final design is that of a no-scroll website (it scales to fit most viewer's displays without the need to scroll up, down, left, or right to view additional content).
This branding exploration involved the production of a visual identity for a fictional rock and roll concert to be held at the Red Rocks Amphitheater for the benefit of illegally hunted elephants. The full package for this campaign involved the development of a visual identity — including logo, color palette, typography, and animated logo — a promotional teaser video, and an event website mockup, each intended to reach the 18- to 35-year-old rock and roll audience that could help make this event a success.
Logo Exploration
Early sketching explored the potential visual identity of this event from multiple angles, but ultimately saw the identity possibilities pared down to items 01, 02, and 06 seen in the sketches below. All the ideated options may have been viable, but these were the most likely to elicit the positive response sought.
Each of the three directions chosen from initial sketches were taken to a near-final mockup stage, with versions created specifically for various scales of size:
Once further reviewed, one logo was chosen for its evocative presentation, highlighting both the event location and the style of entertainment available at this event:
Animated Logo
The following animations were developed in Adobe After Effects with the aid of commercial-use generators. The videos were finalized using Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
At its core, this animated logo is meant to reinforce the solidity introduced by the name of the concert, Rock The Rock, and its associated logo styling. From the hard rock music bed to the weight conveyed by the logo reveal animation and associated sound effects, this video speaks to the harder nature of the concert and its musical lineup. The logo embossing and dust particle effects impart a weight to the mark not otherwise featured, and the reflectivity added gives it presence in three-dimensional space while hinting at its value. As this logo needs to feel heavy, first and foremost, it replaces the Squash and Stretch technique usually used to convey natural motion and weight by instead diverting that perceived energy to the camera shake upon the mark’s landing on the canvas.
This logo animation is intended to be very different than the others, foregoing a music bed for the crackling of a fire. This animation uses a random opacity generator to give the impression of a flickering fire, reinforcing the associated sound effects. Ultimately, this logo animation is intended to present the outdoor, natural, earthy aspect of the concert while still hinting at a small sense of danger—fire is, after all, quite dangerous. This leaves the rest of the visual communication to the mark itself. Finally, the burn animation following the logo image is timed to create anticipation while staging the scene for the shorter location text that follows.
This final animation is meant to provide a sense of travel; one of energetically voyaging to a new and unique destination. In this case, Red Rocks. The anticipation built by this opening energy is paid off by an equally energetic logo reveal, further supported by particle effects that hint at the same kind of fire-based dangerousness—by way of the black embers floating upward—explained of Logo 02.
Website Mockup
Initially, the website was to be a single-page destination. Content areas were to expand and contract with user interaction, revealing all information when called for without navigating the user from page to page. Ultimately, though, the design felt too far removed from core demographic focus, and the content areas were not as clearly defined as was necessary.
With this revision, the website was designed as a no-scroll property. Instead of requiring that users navigate from page to page (a consideration adopted in the previous design seen above) or requiring users to scroll through content, this website design is responsive, formatting all content to fit within the screen on which it is presented. As the visitor navigates the website, the navigation pane to the right of the viewport remains in place while the content area to the left animates content in and out of view.
Because of the modular design of this responsive website, the separate areas—each the navigation pane on the right and the content area on the left—can shift to a native application-like format, layering navigation over content, hiding the navigation when content is selection, and revealing navigation when invoked.
To accompany the assets developed, a presentation was prepared to highlight the functionality of the website and promote the design choices made within, all before investing the time and resources necessary to complete the website construction.
Promotional Video
This video has two goals: to highlight the ridiculousness of the terrible things happening to elephants as a result of poachers, and emphasize the high level of energy that the Rock the Rock concert embodies. To maintain positivity in the video, the elephant portion was kept to a minimum, with the largest portion of the video focused on the kinds of energetic imagery one might expect from this concert. After all, the goal is to get people to the concert.
The two musical pieces chosen are as close in tempo as I could find while still fitting the respective intended moods (156bpm and 160bpm) so as to ensure consistent timing throughout. The images and text are timed to this general tempo, and are set to lengths—that is, rather short—to increase the energy conveyed throughout, only increasing the lengths of particular clips to increase readability. Transitions are used sparingly; only to visually signify important changes, such as the move to the logo animation or the end of the video. A light text effect is used to slightly dirty the text, helping it to better fit the intended environment. Though produced with a zero-dollar budget, this video fits the kind of fun, high-energy concert intended while showcasing the cause and the environment that attendees should expect.