After having to take a forced hiatus due to the pandemic, a concert focused on showcasing the talents of people with disabilities was coming back and needed a new updated look to match the energy and excitement that the return was due.
From a new identity design to the content creation used to drive people to buying tickets, this campaign was focused on creating a unique and modern look that shared the excitement on the night to all who interacted with the brand leading up to it.
The brand was outdated and needed to sell tickets
The Night Of Abilities is a yearly concert that showcases the talents of performers who all have disabilities. For six years, the event had been a resounding success, drawing in large crowds and garnering widespread acclaim. However, the pandemic forced the organizers to put the event on hiatus for several years.
After a multi-year hiatus, the Night Of Abilities finally had the opportunity to hold their event again. However, they realized that their old branding was outdated and no longer reflected the unique talents of their performers. In order to put on a successful event, they knew they needed a fresh, unique branding that accurately represented the spirit and talent of their performers.
In order to understand the brand, we defined that the key values it represented were expression, uniqueness, community, and acceptance. Starting with the values of expression and uniqueness, I created a custom typeface that is composed entirely of basic geometric lines and curves. The playful, fluid nature of the typeface is meant to represent the fundamental aspects of people and how they can come together to create something truly beautiful and unique.
The next step was to create a wordmark logo that would embody the values of community and acceptance. To do this, I placed circles above each starting letter of the brand name. The circles represent different individuals, each with their own unique appearance, but when brought together they form a cohesive whole.
These individual characters also ended up becoming the lettermark logo and the circle became an overarching theme throughout the branding going forward bringing everything together.
Finally, I chose a colour palette that would be both consistent with the previous branding and reflective of the brand's key values. I opted to keep the key blue used previously, but added variations using a lighter and darker shade in order to keep the overall branding concise and clean. The resulting brand is both modern and timeless, and perfectly captures the values of expression, uniqueness, community, and acceptance.
With the basic branding in place, it was now time to start creating content that would get people to buy tickets to the Night Of Abilities. There were three key types of content that we decided to focus on for social media: promotional graphic design, celebrating the sponsors and benefactors of the event, and authentic storytelling.
The first type of content we created was promotional graphic design that focused on typography with a very light collage element using photos from previous events. These graphics were designed to be eye-catching and attention-grabbing, using the new bold typeface paired with Futura as a strong and easily readable typeface to draw the viewer in.
The second type of content we created was designed to celebrate the sponsors and benefactors of the event. These posts were a mixture of designs, combining elements from the promotional graphics with animation to display the logos of some of the bigger sponsors in a way that matched the overall branding of the event.
The third type of content we created was authentic storytelling. We did this by creating interview-style video snippets that featured the people who made the Night Of Abilities possible. These videos were shot in a conversational style, with the participants telling the story of the event from their own perspectives.
Through the use of these three pillars of content, we were able to increase the Night Of Abilities' post engagement rates by an average of 4000%, with some posts achieving an increase of close to 10000%.
In addition to the social media content, there were three main things that needed to be created for the Night Of Abilities event itself. The first was a digital booklet that attendees could download using a QR code. This booklet contained a breakdown of the performers and benefactors of the night, giving attendees an easy way to learn more about the event and the people involved.
The second thing that needed to be created was a custom t-shirt that would be available for purchase at the event. This t-shirt was designed to match the branding of the event, but with a street apparel style that would make it appealing to wear outside of the event as well. The t-shirt was a huge success, selling out quickly on the night.
The third thing that needed to be created was an introductory animation that would set the mood for the night and introduce the performers to the audience. The animation was focused on using particles to represent the explosive personalities of the performers and how the audience was about to be blown away by their talent. The animation was a hit with attendees, adding to the overall excitement and energy of the event.
“The branding and content you created were truly transformative, and helped to make this the biggest event we’ve ever had.
The t-shirt and animation were huge hits and the increased engagement on social media was beyond what we could have hoped for. We can’t thank you enough for your talent and hard work.”
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