Music festival Outside Lands identity watercolor paintings trees experiences created by graphic design studio Color Punch
Poster for the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco, California, from August 10-12 at Golden Gate Park. Features a colorful, animated landscape with floating islands, trees, a bridge, and music-themed decorations. Lists performers including The Weeknd, Florence + The Machine, Janet Jackson, and many others, with a website URL at the bottom.

FESTIVAL IDENTITY CONCEPT

When creating the identity system for Outside Lands our focus was on creating depth and conveying the feeling of being in Golden Gate Park with the ever changing San Francisco sky during the daytime, as well as the feeling of being there among the glowing magic at night with all the trees lit up.

The Isles of Outside Lands each contain a mini scene emerging from and floating over a mystical chasm containing rolling clouds and fog to connect them. Each island is themed to showcase a different aspect of the multi-faceted iconic festival. This concept visually reinforces the colorful, outdoorsy and welcoming vibe of the event, inviting the viewer in to experience each little world within the artwork.

A sketch of a landscape with various outdoor scenes, including a windmill, a city skyline, a bridge, a waterfall, a camping tent, trees, a person wearing a hat, a bicycle, and animals, with the title 'Outside Lands' at the top.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

We began by choosing all of the festival experiences we wanted to highlight, sketching out the isles and various types of trees (eucalyptus and monterey cypress to name a few). Then forming and refining our composition into a final admat sketch.

A watercolor painting of a windmill made with black ink on textured white paper, placed on a wooden sketch table with art supplies around.

PAINTING & ILLUSTRATION

We really wanted to incorporate a hand drawn feel for this identity, creating softer edges and more fluid contrast, which is challenging to achieve with only digital execution. So once we had put pencil to paper, and sketched out our admat composition, we hand painted each of the elements with monochromatic watercolor. We then scanned our watercolors and brought them in to Adobe to begin building the files.

A black and white illustration of a city skyline and the logo for 'Outerlands' on separate sheets of paper, with a colorful decorative plate and chopsticks in the background.
A colorful floating island with trees, barrels, and a sign that says 'Wine Lands.' There's a suburban man with long hair and a hat sitting on a rock. The island features a waterfall flowing into water below and another floating island with a party tent labeled 'The Barbay.' The scene has whimsical, cartoon-style design.

DIGITAL REALM

Scan, digitize, color application. This is where it all comes to life! We centered our color scheme around the daylight blue skies into the lavenders and pinks of dusk, allowing the earth tones to unify everything.