Festival Elements Design
Working as a freelancer at an events design agency I took part in developing ideas for a British festival, the concept of which was a “Rock Hotel”. The direction of this fluctuated greatly between art deco, miami and english countryside. Budgets were quite small and deadlines were very tight, so a rapid turnover of ideas was required daily. Here are some of my concept images and planning whilst working on this project.
The image to the right was an early sketch for an entranceway photo opportunity (it was the festival’s 10th anniversary). It used stacked luggage as seating, hitting on the hotel idea.
Planning
We had to plan and dress the interiors of several featured tents on the site, as well as create a central seating area. Each area was themed with a room you would find in a hotel. The bar became the lobby, the catering tent was themed as a library and the central seating area was themed as a swimming pool.
Pool Themed Seating
This changed greatly as budgets became clearer. There was never an option for bringing an actual pool to the site, so ideas like a huge inflatable bed, hammock or foam pool were drawn up. It later became certain there wasn’t going to be enough money freed up to achieve these and so a simpler pool themed dance-floor with inflatable seating during the day became the most elegant solution.
Below is an early hammock-pool design. Sails were used for some coverage and to bring height to the area to draw the crowd
Directional Signage
This included a large sign for directing the festival goers to areas of interest as well as individual signs for each tent. We began with the idea of an art deco styled screen that could be repeated as a motif around the festival through furniture and other elements. Feedback pushed the design in other directions, featuring more heavily on quirky tropical features before settling more in an english country manner style.
Design idea for an internal origami bird installation. Themed birds became a motif as a quirky extra around the site, referencing peculiar hotel and rock star extravagance.
Simple design for dressing the box office portacabin. Art deco styled screens are visible on the sides and the simple shimmer disk window frames give a glitzy appeal to the “hotel reception”.
