Branding | Advertising
Introducing Plastics Prohibited: a dinner event concept with musical guest performers and speakers, taking place in Santa Monica State Beach, California, appealing to aficionados of female-oriented 2000s pop culture.
Many classic trends have revived back into the mainstream, which I adapted as an approach to this project. Taking iconic elements such as butterfly hairclips, holographics, pixelated text, florals, scrapbooks, Barbie dolls, and “chick-flicks”, I developed a brand that references this iconic collection of y2k memorabilia in a modern, vapourwave style to create a striking look that attracts an audience of adults, both young and young at heart.
The artwork incorporates personally created and stock graphics, composed and applied to mock-ups. Using Procreate and Canva, the final deliverables I designed include a poster, social media posts, t-shirt, and denim jacket mock-ups, a menu/event program, event booth, filters for mobile photos and a frame for keepsake photo prints.
For this musical event, I wanted to create a brand identity based on its defining characteristics: vibrant, feminine, and retro-futuristic. Starting with the logo, I was tasked to integrate a presenting sponsor with the elements I selected. I took the treble clef used in musical notation, combined it with a Barbie-inspired typeface, and finally a play button icon as nod to the historical rise of MP3 players.
Designs from vapourwave and the 2000s subculture overlap in their heavy use of bright hues and glowing neons, which I used in communicating the high-impact energy for this nighttime summer event.
Blue, purple, and orange were selected to help viewers picture themselves dining in the Californian sunsets while the dominant use of pink also reflects the brand’s values of female empowerment. Additionally, the sharp-edged graphics, lines, grids, and solid text in vapourwave reinforce a softer feminine energy to become bolder instead.
Developing this project challenged me to become resourceful in my tools at this stage of experience, and compelled me to turn to the design field, pursuing further education. Life in plastic certainly isn’t fantastic, and Plastics Prohibited is all about celebrating authenticity as a feminine individual, in however way one chooses to define it.
