Studio Brief 3 - Branding Research - D&AD Festival

The Beautiful Meme branding of D&AD Festival

The D&AD Festival is a three day event with an exhibition of all pencil winning designers, Next Director, Next Photographer and New Blood Awards. The event included speakers from across the profession.

The Beautiful Meme created the identity for the 2015 event, which included environmental graphics, wayfinding and poster design. The design aimed to create debate around the creative process whilst being representative of a variety of viewpoints about creativity. The branding reflected the diversity of the audiences, age ranges and professional status. 

The typographic design used jokes, poems and phrases to represent the work within the exhibition and to spark debate around the creative process. It used a mixture of formal and informal sources to create a contrast between light heartedness and critique. The venue was large, so poster designs were rearranged in different combinations which kept the space engaging throughout.The design was based around the entry campaign for the awards of 'Nothing Matters More' which suggested how important creativity is and the importance of winning a pencil. The typeface Franklin was distorted and arranged in different ways to reflect the varying opinions of the creative community.

The wayfinding used black text on a white background with pencil silhouettes creating strikingly simple design, one that uses the brands pencil logo to full effect. The imagery was provided by Shutterstock who sponsored the event, which allowed the design to be as visually stimulating as the typographic quotes.