Mutek 17
Multi platform campaign for the seventeenth edition of Mutek, an international festival of digital creativity and electronic music. This campaign needed to reflect both elements. The look and feel had to evoke a festival about digital technology and avant-garde electronic music but also warmth, human experience and springtime. Our main goal for a large project like this one is to build a strong base for the initial concept presentation.
We started the concept with a lot of writing, and eventually landed on the idea of experiencing something that is beyond the obvious. Also that we all experience something different. We then played around with this idea of duality, reality, perception. Our formula was simple: we developed 6 or 7 different abstract merging patterns and cropped imagery. We had way too many images at first, and way too many choices to make. We eventually understood what worked best together. We wanted the viewer to understand both images but in a very subtle way. Nature photography was a big inspiration, but the main graphic inspiration was 60 and 70 op art.
At Nouvelle Administration we like to work as a team, we ping pong a lot and challenge each other.
For the 17th edition, we worked on the art direction and design of: printed materials, writing, web promotional materials, social media consultation, digital and print ads, the mobile app, signage, merchandise, environmental design, stage projection graphics, as well as lanyards and tickets.
We had a really great response from both festival goers and the design community. People were happy to see a techno festival campaign that didn't only have abstract geometric lines and shapes, and which employed great and simple typography. We learned that collaboration is important. In order to decline many elements, one needs to build a solid art direction foundation.
In terms of challenges: Like many cultural events and festivals in Canada, budget is extremely limited. We had to do our best with very little ressources. Another challenge was making sure that the design quality control was tight, and the direction was respected at it’s fullest. Also this festival is bilingual, which can cause certain twists and turns for the layout design and writing.
