Color Harmony: Packaging

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V Festival

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In 2007, after twelve years in the

U.K., Virgin brought its wildly

successful V Festival to Australia,

hoping to make the inaugural

event not just a great concert,

but a music experience that

would raise the bar for popular

music festivals in Australia.

By bringing together some of the best musical acts from around the

globe along with local Australian talent, featuring Beck, the Pixies,

Pet Shop Boys, Gnarls Barkley, Groove Armada, Bang Gang Deejays,

among others, the festival sought to create a once-in-a-lifetime festival

experience that was uniquely Australian.

Modular Touring was enlisted to create an unforgettable concert. They,

in turn, hired Autumn:01 design fi rm to create an atmosphere that was

vibrant, hip, and unique. To do this, Autumn:01 and art director Kate

Kendall wanted to create a brand identity for the event that could be

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Design for Special Events

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applied through all materials produced, could be built upon in

future festivals, and would distinguish Australia’s V Festival from

its predecessor in the U.K. and other music festivals already taking

place in Australia. They also wanted to “imprint a lasting visual

memory” and “have strong brand recognition in the lead up to,

and after, the event.” As such, they chose to take a three-pronged

approach to the design, focusing on color, typography, and iconic

imagery to create the over-arching brand identity.

By using a CMYK color scheme and modern, bold font, they were

able to create a look that was young, hip, energetic, and captures

the feeling of excitement surrounding such a large, groundbreaking

event. They also chose a number of images that mirrored the iconic

nature of the festival. Using a photo of a hand making the universal

peace sign, which also looks like a V to represent the V Festival, they

were able to brand the event in a way that is already familiar to the

large viewing audience. The strength of using images of cassette

tapes, headphones, and a boom box to brand the individual stages

is that they at once represented music and nostalgia, refl ecting some

of the older and reunited bands that performed and that will

continue to be cultivated as the festival goes on each year.

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Case Study: V Festival

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The project began long before the festival itself took place. The print

campaign began with a launch party, street, and print advertising, and

continued with posters, and postcards. Autumn:01 designed the event

website, HTML emails, and created an online viral campaign. At the

festival, they designed the look and branding of three stages, directional

towers, site maps, information fl yers, drink cards, staff clothing and

badges, and wristbands. They also created various merchandising

products including several styles of T-shirts, drink holders, and beach balls.

In designing such a vast array of materials for such a large event,

Autumn:01 was faced with a number of challenges. First, the design

studio was brought into the process after it had already begun working

with a different design fi rm. Starting over from scratch and already a

bit late in the game, made for extremely tight deadlines. Also, as with

any project of this magnitude, they were subject to approvals from

various sources including their client, Modular Touring, Virgin, and

the various sponsors.

It was important to Autumn:01 to include all of the required advertising

without overloading the audience with corporate messages and

imagery as other festivals had done, so that the festival experience not

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