Design Blog: Itzacon V

So, Itzacon V went off without a hitch, leaving very many satisfied punters, and relieved and happy organisers. I was part of the committee this year, designing the brand identity and all related media for the event. This meant I had an access-all-areas pass, and got to see how my work was being regarded by the regular punters and staff alike. Everyone seemed pleased with it, which was highly gratifying.

Here's how it all happened;

The Brief:

I was approached about this time last year to provide the brand identity for the Con. Itzacon is unusual among Gaming Conventions in Ireland in that it reinvents it's look completely every year. This approach can provide a fresh and visually stimulating experience for attendees each year, and allows for an added value to souvenirs of the event, but it does also pose a challenge for any designer to come up with something completely new each year while still keeping within the spirit and identity of the Con.

I was initially told to go nuts and come up with something cool. I went off and started doodling. I'd been reading a lot about Futurism, and also Russian Realism, and had been pondering revolutionary imagery for a while, and so that all came together in my head. I had the initial idea, and started sketching some roughs. A couple of days later the Con Director got back to me and said he'd had a wonderful idea, involving Revolutionary Propagandist Imagery. Seperate to this, the Con web master had erected a holding page which had "Itzacon" written in a faux-cyrillic font, black on red.

Sometimes these small synergies can happen, and it's best to go with it when it does - one should trust to inspiration and serendipity as much as possible.

The biggest requirement in this sort of exercise is to come up with a logo - and iconic image which can be easily transferred across various media, small or big, without losing any detail. In the realm of gaming conventions it's been quite common for a fantasy artist to be conscripted to provide a fantasy illustration - often in full colour, watercolour or some other rich media on high-weight paper or the like. Very beautiful, but very hard to reproduce simply and cheaply on, say, a T-shirt.

Given that the Conference is a not-for-profit endeavour, specifically oriented to raise money for charity, low cost is definitely a goal. As such, a logo for the event would want to be one colour, ideally black on white or similar, to facilitate easy reproduction on photocopiers if need be. Since T-shirts were a required product as well, then one colour printing significantly minimises operational costs.

The required media for the brand were as follows;

• Website
  
• A3/A4 Poster
  
• A5 Flier
  
• A5 Advertisement (to be printed in the booklets of other Cons)
  
• A4 tri-fold brochure
  
• A5 Booklet
  
• VIP Guest Passes
  
• Regular Attendee Weekend Tickets
  
• T-shirts, "committee" and "staff"
  
• 10cm Pin-badges
  

Not all of these were immediately apparent from day one, which brings me nicely to my second Tip of this blog entry;

Be flexible. Within reason (taking into consideration cost-benefit-time etc), designed material may be needed right up until the tapes go up on your event. More on this later.

The Premise:

The most iconic revolutionary image around is a photo by Alberto Korda of Ernesto "Che" Guevera, the Argentinian leader of revolutions in Cuba, Bolivia and Guatemala. It's been taken and reprinted in so many forms it's become known by everyone.

I decided to riff on this piece, incorporating the face-tentacles associated with the creature Cthulhu, beloved of Role-Players the world over.

The remainder of the look and feel drew more from Eastern Block propagandist imagery.

It took me about a week to work up Che-thulhu, and some basic roughs of the poster and some other required media. Once I presented them to the committee they were well received, so I got a unilateral go ahead on the next step. This doesn't always happen, of course; there's usually a lengthy period of refinement for the client, where they try to describe exactly what it is they want, and you try to render that as best you can. It's an iterative process - a necessary evil if you will. Sometimes though, you're given carte blanche, or else you're just in the right head space at the right time.
At any rate, I was green-lit to proceed with the first piece of printed media - the Poster.

The Procedure:

The first item required, and the first image that formed in my head, as I've mnetioned was that of the A3 poster. This was to be a montage of the imagery I had already decided upon, featuring my new "Che-thulhu" prominantly. A semi-cyrillic font was chosen to reinforce the bold Russian propagandist ethic.

From this initial design, all other media were simple transfers of the original. It doesn't always happen that way, but when it does it's a blessing.

The background imagery was layered up using photoshop - it comprises a snapshot of the skyline above Kremlinskaya in Moscow, featuring such landmarks as the Rossiya Hotel, which is merged into a snapshot of the towers of NUI Galway's Quadrangle. Both were rendered in grubby black on white. This was layered on top of a red-orange gradient, over which was layered a grungy piece of rusted copper, set to "Overlay". Finally, I drew up some sun ray patterns in Illustrator, and imported them into Photoshop, setting them to an ochre colour and setting the Layer mode to Screen - thus creating the Krieg light effect over the background. Some random black clouds set to 30% opacity and Soft Light completed the look.

The Additions:

Some of the items were last minute additions, such as the A5 flier and the advert. Under pressure of time these tasks can be challenging. Also, with a week to go, and a requirement to have some way of recording who paid for what (weekend pass, individual games/tournaments),
I came up with the idea of using a bookmark-sized card ticket for the weekend pass, onto which stickers for individual games could be stuck as they were bought. These stickers would look like passport stamps. I'm not entirely sure where I got the idea from, but it seemed to jibe with the overall visual theme, and was a great success, both for the organisers (who could track who got access to what) and also for the attendees, who got added souvenir value for their money.

Lessons Learned:

Not so much a lesson learned this time around but definitely compounded - I had all my artwork in for printing a good three weeks or more before they were required. This made for a smoother time for the organising committee and a far less panicked time for me. I'd recommend as much forethought as possible for these things.