Rebranding of Oxegen, an iconic old Irish music festival.
This was a project for a course at Harbour Space University called Designing Brand Experiences. It was without a doubt my favourite project to work on during the masters course. It’s unbelievable how much we learned from our teacher and mentor, Diego Marini, Co-Founder of Yummy Colours, in just 3 weeks.
The project deliverable was a 20 minute pitch to present our work on the following areas. So, I decided to do the rebranding of an iconic old Irish music festival. I attended Oxegen back in 2009; the first of many great festivals to follow.
I know that it should go without saying that the importance of the discovery phase of any project should never be underestimated, but under the valuable guidance of my teacher Diego Marini I realised a whole new weight to the significance of this reality. The main challenge in this project was the unfortunately short amount of time we had to execute it. The race against the clock made the temptation to neglect the discovery phase and dive straight into design ever greater, but ultimately the investment in the discovery phase paid off as it guided, informed and accelerated the work that followed.
Original colour palette of red, green white applied to typography over photography. There’s plenty of room to make for a more distinct visual identity. At least in the early years the visual communication was a confusing mixture of original colour pallet with a new pallet in 2013.
The message that Oxegen communicated through its social media and other platforms was basically “We’re here to party”. Visual assets focus on young crowds drinking and worshiping musicians. There’s no emphasis placed on other attractions, philosophies, ideologies.
A celebration for the sake of a celebration is great, but was the absence of a more meaningful purpose at the root of Oxegen’s downfall? It seems to me that an event which attracts tens of thousands of people has the potential to make a more meaningful impact.
I chose the following 6 objectives for the brand to help guide later decisions by establishing a clear sense of direction.
By looking at both direct and indirect competitors, I observed patterns in what their festivals do well, or poorly, their engagement on social media, their websites, and how they communicate with their followers and communities.
Once I had a strong sense of the direction I wanted to go with the rebranding, I was ready to build a narrative for the brand. I needed to come up with a meaningful, relevant mission, vision and value system.
With a name like Oxegen, it made sense to consider a link to the element, oxygen, which gave breath to life on earth in the first place. I appreciate that this wasn’t necessarily likely (all those billions of years ago), and also recognising that the brand is a celebration, I figured what better narrative than to be a celebration of the odds of life.
Of course, in the short time afforded for this project there was no time for user interviews to help inform the building of brand personas. That said, I’ve been to my fair share of music festivals, and I know kinds of crowds I want to attract to Oxegen and the kinds of crowds I don’t. So I decided to treat the brand persona a little different to typical user personas, and to present it in a more general format. I described a character, inside and out, which I felt embodies the philosophy of the brand and celebrated diversity, equity and inclusion.
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open-minded and interested in others’ points of view.
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inspired by life and passionate about beauty.
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creative and innovative and we want to make a difference.
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excited about a world in which everybody SEES everybody.
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proud of our progress and of our potential.
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frustrated with ignorance and unwillingness to change.
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curious about what we know and what we don’t know.
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understand that we don’t understand.
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bold, energetic and ready for action.
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optimistic about the future.
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scared of the anger and mistrust in the world.
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ready to face our fears and stand up to bullies. together.
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adults with responsibilities.
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busy with work, with our families and our friends.
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getting on with life, and often lose track of time.
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looking forward to the next opportunity to enjoy, celebrate, laugh.
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juggling many things at once; work, finances, relationships, choices.
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responsible for our planet.
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open-minded and interested in others’ points of view.
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inspired by life and passionate about beauty.
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creative and innovative and we want to make a difference.
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excited about a world in which everybody SEES everybody.
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proud of our progress and of our potential.
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frustrated with ignorance and unwillingness to change.
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curious about what we know and what we don’t know.
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understand that we don’t understand.
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bold, energetic and ready for action.
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optimistic about the future.
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scared of the anger and mistrust in the world.
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ready to face our fears and stand up to bullies. together.
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are single.
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are in love.
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have young families.
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look similar, some look different, none of us care.
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agree, others disagree.
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dance.
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sing.
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listen.
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care.
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think.
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question.
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entertain.
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lead.
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enjoy.
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grow.
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share.
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support.
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create.
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party.
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love.
I couldn’t resist taking advantage of the aesthetically elegant written word “Oxegen’ so I decided to build the logo around it. It is especially balanced when we emphasise the circular shape of the o, e and G. So I started by creating a grid that facilitates the shape of these three letters.
Next, I capitalised on the structurally similar remaining two letters; X and N, by overlaying a simple additional grid to accommodate them. The result of the combined grids provides a structure to build the letters of our wordark on.
By stacking the wordmark, the two resulting rows each contain two instances of the larger square grid and one instance of the smaller, more narrow rectangular grid. Once I created each of the letters of the wordmark I balanced the space around each letter to fit neatly into a rectangular structure.
I explored different weights to find the one that I felt best fitted the brand identity. In keeping with the brand values, I tried to communicate confidence, energy (bold) while preserving a sense of balance and unity (humility). Looking back, I can see that this logo could use a little tidying up. But I loved building and following the system behind its design and overall I’m really happy with how it turned out.
For the colour palette I took inspiration from a fashion post I saved to my Behance account a few months previous to the project. I feel like colours appropriately capture the confident, energetic and daring mood I wanted to convey. The brand stands for many things, and so it was important to choose a balanced variety of colours which allowed me to communicate the brand’s message most effectively.Again inspired by the name Oxegen, I decided to name each colour after an element in the periodic table to strengthen the consistency across the brand identity. Here are the images which inspired the colour palette I ultemately went for:
To distinguish the brand from any other, I have designed a graphic system to orientate our visuals. The system revolves around two similar grids. The first, which informed our logo design, was already introduced. The second is a modification of the first which accommodates the construction of the symbols of the four classical elements; fire, water, air and earth. The inclination of the legs of the X in our logo was informed by the angle created by the traditional symbols for each element in the first place.
The grid-based system instructs the design of icons and other assets while remaining consistent in aesthetic communication.
To further distinguish our brand, I have designed a custom typeface, Oxegen, to use for posters and other visual assets. Each character of the typeface is built on the design system grids. The use of both grids offers a dynamic range of possibilities for each character. The A and the Q are good examples to illustrate the difference between the two grids.
This was my first time to really play with typography and I found it so much fun. Of course, it’s a work in progress, but I feel like it’s a good start. The race against the clock meant I didn’t get a chance to spend the time needed to get it right. Nonetheless, I loved this exercise and I learned a lot from it! Actually, in a way the imperfections almost lend themselves to the rebellious quality of Oxegen’s character. Oxegen is a platform that aims to stimulate positive social change, but change is uncomfortable for most people. So in a way it’s fitting that there is an awkward, uncomfortable edge to this custom typeface.
I chose Effra as the typeface for content. It is bold and confident yet honest and friendly. While the custom Oxegen typeface is dedicated to graphical designs, Effra is used for other content.
Together, the graphic system and custom typeface created consistency across the visual communication for billboards, posters and banners.
Here you can get a sense of the look and feel of Oxegen’s first seasonal magazine which aims to contribute to a consistent communication channel with it’s audience.
Transport to and from events such as big festivals is the biggest culprit in terms of carbon emissions. By making it easier for festival goers to travel in groups, Oxegen can significantly reduce their carbon footprint.
I designed a simple layout for the homepage of the website, just an idea for the look and feel. The layout follows the same modular framework as the rest of our visual design; informed by our typographic grid. Just like the letters in each row of our logo are built on a row with two squares and a smaller rectangle, each layer of our website follows the same structure. I feel like this further contributes to the consistency of the brand’s visual identity.
This was an amazing introductory project to branding. I loved the process and the considerations that needed to be made.
The most interesting lesson that I feel this project particularly emphasised was the value of establishing a strong brand narrative, and the importance of the discovery phase in doing so. From the get-go, time was against me for this project; there’s only so much you can do in 3 weeks. Because of the time pressure, it was especially tempting to cut the discovery/ideation phase short and start designing. Under the incredibly helpful guidance of my Mentor Diego Marini, I resisted moving forward until the time was right and it resulted in a brand narrative and a graphic system that made the later designs so much faster, and that was also so much fun to work with!
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