When you go to a concert, you can buy a T-shirt, usually for that particular tour. Every time you wear that shirt, you'll be reminded of the time you saw that band, in that city, at that venue. Here, good branding ties itself to memory -- the big, red tongue to The Rolling Stones, the Warhol banana to The Velvet Underground.
ArtPrize strives for a similarity in recognition. It's not only a 501c3 and one of the largest arts competitions in existence and history, it's also an international organization that changes and evolves with each year. How do you brand an event like that? How can you maintain consistency while pushing the envelope in terms of visual design?
The first piece of design work each year for this organization is the poster, which has typically featured a variation on 'the squiggle,' a shape that correlates to the familiarity of a certain sculpture that Grand Rapids has attached itself to, branding-wise, for a long time -- that is, of course, Alexander Calder's La Grande Vitesse.
With two posters of the past and a third that will be unveiled tonight, the series seems somewhat collectible, which is sort of what they had in mind.
"It's essentially an iconic series of images that people who attend the event have an endearing reference to," Todd Herring, Director of Marketing, says. "It's almost like a mental placeholder of the overall experience [attendees] had at the event. We'd like people who visited the event to see the series of posters and have an emotional connection based in good design and community and collaboration."
The responsibility of the poster this year was assigned to
Square One Design, a long-standing design firm based in Grand Rapids, currently operating out of an office on Lake Drive in Uptown.
Square One presented six different concepts before the final design was selected as the face of 2011's ArtPrize. Lindsay Jones, the designer of this year's 24x36 poster, also designed last year's, a vibrant piece that featured the Squiggle overlapping itself in multiple colors.
Mike Gorman of Square One, who also acts as 2011 ArtPrize Art Director, says while last year's poster was all about that overlap, this year's is about dialog.
The poster has a certain degree of contemporary elegance, from its metallic silver background to the colorful conversation bubbles that fill the sideways form of the Squiggle shape. It's recognizable enough off the bat that it will be easy to pick out during this year's events on other essential pieces of branding -- way-finding signs, the ArtPrize-specific metro card offered by The Rapid, guidebooks, venue markers and more.
"When you have event signage that is part of way-finding, you have to create consistency," Herring says. "But at the same time, you want to do something that truly respects design in a way that makes ArtPrize fun and unexpected. It's still elegant, but not cagey or standoffish, and it's accessible to anyone who looks at it."
Designer Lindsay Jones is originally from central Indiana and a graduate of Ball State University with a B.F.A. in Visual Communication. She's been with Square One since 2008 and lists her clients as Paramount Coffee Company, Scott Group Custom Carpets, Kellogg and Grand Rapids' own Reserve Wine Bar.
"Square One gives me a lot of great opportunities to work closely with clients, which is not always the case for young designers," Jones says. "It's an environment filled with creative and encouraging people who make me want to do the best work possible."
Jones says the sizes and colors of the bubbles used in the posters are meant to represent the "diversity of the voices that take part in this conversation." Conversation is a word that comes up frequently with both Gorman and Herring as well, and a word that is repeated numerous times during each competition.
"We're creating a platform to create the conversation," Herring says -- again, that word, "and engage something that is incredibly valuable to the human experience -- art -- in a way they haven't done before. ArtPrize is and will always be [the participants'] voice and there's nothing that the organizers can do to change that."
"I think in branding, you have to be fairly honest or it eventually fails," Gorman says. "If you're saying 'we're this,' but you're really this, it breaks down when you meet the people who thought you were one thing when you're really the other. The brand has to reflect what the organization is. When it does that really well, people really recognize them."
Honesty in branding is something the designers at Square One have mentioned before in an interview about their work with Holland-based furniture company Sparkeology, a young company they sought to brand as approachable and fun to match the minimalist, hip furniture the company offered.
When designing ArtPrize's 2011 poster, Jones was aiming for something "playful, yet sophisticated" that would "hopefully resonate with the art world, as well as ArtPrize visitors and contributors" to capture the spirit of fun and community she feels is the focus of the event.
"The ArtPrize brand is unique because it is focused around an annual event that evolves visually every time," she says. "There is always a base with the same core elements and a voice that make it recognizable, but each year, ArtPrize has the chance to generate new excitement by re-imagining the overall look of its brand."
The poster was printed by Custom Printing, with paper courtesy of xpedx and Mohawk. If you want to see this poster for yourself, you can be among the first by visiting our office (11 Jefferson NE) tonight at 7 p.m. We'll have refreshments, magic and mingling.
Photo by Jeff Hill
J. Bennett Rylah is the Managing Editor of Rapid Growth Media.