The Dayton Potato Fest is an annual festival held on the second weekend in August in the city of Dayton, OH since 2021 as a way to bring the city together after the pandemic. The festival is centered around potato dishes, food truck vendors, and different activities/entertainment to engage the community.
What is the current visual identity?
The current visual identity is inconsistent. There are a mix of colors over an almost full transparency background in the main advertising flyer, making it hard to read. Those colors are also different from the wordmark, which has potatoes underneath it. The wordmark itself sometimes has the potatoes, sometimes not, sometimes there’s an appearance of the Potato Mascot, sometimes not, sometimes the mascot is by itself.
What are the core values of this event?
Inclusion - The Potato Festival was created to unite the city after the Pandemic.
Variety - Food Trucks are brought in from all over that each have different ways to prepare potato dishes.
Entertainment - It's an 8 hour long community event with competitions, dancing, and live bands for the whole family.I tried to incorporate my 3 identified core values throughout my process. How do I visually show the familiarity and inclusion of a local event? How do I show the variety of potatoes? How do I make it fun and entertaining, something that the community and vendors will want to come back to every year?
Sketches
Initial Digital sketches
Final black and white logo
Color exploration
I drew inspiration from potato sacks I found online. I knew because of the color printing on the potato sack fabric, that the colors would have to be bold but still grounded, which is exactly what I was looking for. The bold colors give off the vibe of a fun family-friendly and community-orientated festival while still feeling grounded to a potato.
Brand identity
To further explore the brand's identity, I created touchpoints to represent how it would interact in the world. They bring in a lot of food trucks that prepare potato dishes and they hold the whole festival in a park in downtown Dayton, OH. The food truck and the park were what I focused on making my touchpoints around.
