I was fortunate to have the opportunity to design the family of identities for South by Southwest in 2009. They expressed an interest in "getting back to their roots"—for lack of a better term—as the festival had grown over the years and they had strayed from the sort of "D.I.Y." approach that the festival embodied in its more formative years.
In order to convey this it seemed natural to create a series of relatively naive hand-drawn hands holding representative, quickly read icons. Additionally I created a custom typeface to compliment the style of theicons to use for headlines and titles across the numerous applications throughout the festival signage and collateral.
South by Southwest is an annual conference that’s been held in Austin, Texas, since 1987. Originally a Music conference focused on bringing attention to the Austin music scene, the event has expanded to cover Film and Interactive topics and events while playing host to over 17,000 attendees from all over the world.
