HiveMind

Welcome to the

BCIT Graphics Brief

For my final assignment for my graphics class at BCIT, I was tasked with creating a summer music festival. This festival could be any genre of our choosing and could be based anywhere in the world. We were only allowed to use bands that are still alive and have a maximum of three genres.

This was a fantastic opportunity for me to take creative license in my ideas and really put to use my skills in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

  1. Brainstorming

  2. Research

  3. Moodboard

4. Drafts

5. Final Concept

Brainstorming

After being given such an open and ambiguous brief, the only viable option to start off this assignment was to brainstorm ideas.

The brief outlined that we could use any genre we wanted so naturally, the genre was the first area I started with when brainstorming. I started off with the genres I listen to the most: Rock, Indie, EDM, Electronic, Shoegaze, House, Classical, and Pop. Having such a wide taste in music, it was hard to pick one to focus the festival on (as the brief outlined we keep the genres to 3 at a maximum).

I started by noting down potential artists that I would want to see at a festival myself. Most concerts I have been to are rock and/or Indie and the one festival I went to was ParkLife (a DJ festival in Manchester). All three have similar routes and cross over quite a bit (such as Rock + Electronic = Nine Inch Nails)

After this, I decided to look at potential names, such as Everlong (after the Foo Fighters song of the same name) and Disturbia. After asking others what genre they thought the name may be describing and them then associating them with other genres, I decided to take it down another path. I started brainstorming locations and general ideas for the festival to help me decide.

Canada

  • Vancouver

    • Stanley Park Malkin Bowl

    • Fox Cabaret

    • Rogers Arena

    • Rickshaw Theatre

Japan

    • Japan

    • Osaka

    • Hibiya Open Air

    • Fandango

England

  • London

  • Camden

Destinations

Three locations immediately came to mind: Canada, Japan, and England. I had an idea to have them all host the festival at the same time as an international festival but soon realized that it would be extremely complicated if it was a real festival. I debated back and forth for a while but landed on London for the destination - specifically, Camden Lock.

I chose Camden Lock because of the multiple venues it has which would allow for the multi-venue idea without having the issue of it being international. Venues are listed below:

  • The Underworld

  • The Elephant's Head

  • The Black Heart

  • PowerHaus

  • Camden Market

  • Camden Rhino Turf

  • St.Martin's Gardens

  • Simmons Bar

  • The Camden Assembly Pub

  • Camden Gardens

Camden also has:

  • lots of underground and above-ground venues

  • It has a punk/rock vibe already

  • Many people there meet the target audience

  • It’s very vibrant

  • Everyone there goes for similar reasons / are likeminded

Research + Demographics

Genre Research

Rock Research:

  • Rock music has been around since about 1956.

  • The demographic of rock music spans from early childhood to 90 and up

  • The demographic for sweaty, scuffy rock shows is considerably younger than 90 (50 + attend them though)

  • The more sedate and sit-down the venue = more seniors you’ll see

  • In theory, you could have four generations attending a nominally rock show together

  • More Americans are listening to rock radio today than they were four years ago

  •  More than 81% of music listeners say they listen to rock music, either often or occasionally (according to  “Data & Insights To Rock Your Programming,” a new report and webinar presented Wednesday by Nielsen)

  • The gender split of rock music fans is nearly 50/50

  • Rock music fans are 77% more likely to be aged 55+ and 33% more likely to be 35-54

Indie Research:

Indie pop originates from indie rock and 1960's girl-group pop

  • the gender is balanced between a male and female audience

  • The audience is aged 15 to 25

  • Discovery is through social networking advertisements and the media e.g. TV adverts and adverts/promotion on music apps

  • Listening is usually done via streaming apps such as Spotify and Apple Music,

  • The audience is highly likely to listen to indie/pop songs for the music and not the artist, so the videos are quite basic and low budget, however, they can be interesting or quirky at times

  • NME.com = 

    • The most popular audience for indie pop music is an "intensely engaged audience of 16-24-year-olds"  showing that the mean age of the audience will be 24

    • 66% of the people that listened to this music were male, and 34% of them were female

    • The target audience for indie pop music will be male of gender and aged around 16-24

Electronic Research:

  • The EDM music scene is predominantly male (55%)

  • 45% of listeners are female

  • However actual attendance of festivals swings in favour of females with one study showing females making up 56% of total attendance

  • The dominant age group of the scene is 18-24 at 23% total

  • Average education for listeners comes in at 28% with some college followed by high school graduates at 18%

  • 27% of listeners have a household income of $25,000-49,000 followed by 23% coming in with $50,000-74,000

Personas

As a user researcher, I know how important it is to create a user persona for anything you make. This was the first thing I did after gathering all my research.

  • Name: Danielle

    Age: 25

    Job: Accountant

    Likes: Rock, Indie, Electronic, Levis, Brewdog Beer

    Dislikes: Chart Music, Samsung,

    Status: Married

  • Name: John

    Age: 55

    Job: Game Producer

    Likes: Rock, classic rock, Wine, Pasta

    Dislikes: Fast Food, ‘High End’ products

    Status: 25 years Married with 2 children

I chose two make two personas for this festival as the music this festival will have will attract people of all genders and ages, as shown in the research above. Having one younger and one older represents the multiple age groups, as well as having one male and one female of varying backgrounds represents the diversity of those who listen to these genres.

Pricing

Day — £215

The price of a single-day ticket will be £215 based on research of similar UK-based festivals.

Weekend — £420

The price of a weekend ticket will be £420 based on research of similar UK-based festivals. I also decided to make it double the price - £10 as a sort of ‘discount’ for buying both days.

The pricing was determined by looking at Festival ticket prices of a similar genre type.

Reading/Leeds:

Early Entry = £286.20 / $461.56

Weekend = £425.75 / $686.61

Day = £90 - 100 / $145.14 - 161.27

Moodboard

Initial Drafts

Draft #1

After establishing a better base to come up with ideas for names, I decided to brainstorm some potential names based on the festival's aesthetic.

  • Everlong (the name of the Foo Fighters’ popular song)

  • Disturbia

  • The Core

  • Hive

As I previously mentioned, I ruled out Everlong and it wasn’t associated with rock, indie and electronic music outright. I then started looking at more words with a clearer association. Because I was still using the idea of having the festival over multiple venues, the idea of there being a core power fuelling it all came to mind. This then followed into the idea of a hive - with the bees (the people) being controlled by the Queen Bee (the music) in the Hive (the festival). Because of this, the term Hivemind seemed to fit the idea of an interconnected music experience perfectly. From this point on the festival was called HiveMind.

Keywords:

Underground

•

Above Ground

•

Interconnected

•

Underground • Above Ground • Interconnected •

Experience

•

Hive

•

Connected

•

Experience • Hive • Connected •

Experience

•

Hive

•

Connected

•

Experience • Hive • Connected •

Logo Draft #1

  • Heavily inspired by the ‘Honeycomb’ theme due to the word Hive in the name and the relation to bees + beehives

  • Using a 4 colour palette 

  • Experiment with the switching of colours and border colours to see what would look good

  • I then began to see that it looked like a STOP sign and didn’t think it would be a good idea to continue with the octagon as the main shape due to the aggressive and opposing nature widely associated with the shape

Logo Draft #2

  • Moving from the octagon shape I decided to explore the logo with just the name as the main aspect rather than having the shape take on this role

  • I went to Dafont.com to find a number of fonts that I thought could look good and put onto separate artboards with each colour from the palette also shown

  • I decided here the 1st font (far left) was my favourite as it reminded me of electronic music album cover fonts and other festival fonts

  • I did however decide to bulk up the font to make it more legible and bolder to appeal to those who know and like the boldness associated with rock and indie music

Testing Logo Viability

  • Once increasing the weight of the font I decided to put it into context with colour blocks rather than having it ‘float’ as it will be used with colour in the future on merchandise

  • This provided good insight into how I can use the 4 colours in contrast with each other + in different contexts and how the colours can work

After deciding to use the singular word for the logo I decided to follow this

  • However I still wanted to include the ‘honeycomb’ shape in the logo because of the relevance to bee hives and the ‘Hivemind’

  • I included hexagons in replacement for the points on the top of the ‘i’s in the logo (after I realised my silly mistake of previously using octagons instead of hexagons *facepalm*)

  • I also decided to use contrast to highlight the two words to create a sense of balance which is a vital part of the workings of a hivemind - balance is integral to the working of a good shared experience (also reflects the ying-yang symbol of balance)

HiveMind

HiveMind is a Rock, Indie and Electronic festival that welcomes any and all forms of these genres throughout the ages.

Based in Camden Lock, London, the festival will be taking place from 12 pm Friday, August 4th to 4 am Sunday, August 6th, 2023. The festival will be an event taking place in various different music venues in Camden Lock; in pubs, clubs, and underground and outdoor venues.

HiveMind T-shirts:

  • Men’s

  • Woman’s

  • Unisex

HiveMind Accessories:

  • Pins

  • Phone Cases (iPhone, Samsung, Huawei)

18+ Merchandise:

  • Beer (Lager, IPA, Stouts)

  • Pint Glass

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