Manipulate Festival Identity
This is a series of posters that I designed for MANIPULATE, Edinburgh’s international festival of visual theatre and animated film. The festival presents the very best of Scottish and international visual theatre, puppetry and animated film to adult audiences in Edinburgh and beyond.
The MANIPULATE logo is ‘manipulated’ each year by an invited animator and turned in to an animated ident that is used to announce the festival. The logo and animation for 2023 was made by Jamie Macdonald, his website can be found here. The design brief suggested using Jamie’s logo and animation as a starting point for the development of the design of the festival identity. In collaboration with the festival, taking cues from Jamie’s animation, I initially developed the design of the posters, which I then used as a basis for the others design elements that were part of the brief.
Above is the general poster that announces the festival using striking images of performers from UN-retained which I cut out and re-configured against a starry green galaxy that I created in Photoshop. The posters below use imagery from other performances and events in the festival but all follow the same design and layout and make use of the starry green galaxy to create a cohesive set of posters. These posters have a dual purpose, giving equal prominence to the dates of the festival as well as the performance that it promotes.
The posters are various sizes from A3 to A0 and are part of a wider identity that I designed for MANIPULATE that has been adapted for a suite of deliverables including a programme guide, online and printed advertisements, social media assets, digital posters, lanyards, and a ‘takeover’ of The Skinny website.
The MANIPULATE logo is ‘manipulated’ each year by an invited animator and turned in to an animated ident that is used to announce the festival. The logo and animation for 2023 was made by Jamie Macdonald, his website can be found here. The design brief suggested using Jamie’s logo and animation as a starting point for the development of the design of the festival identity. In collaboration with the festival, taking cues from Jamie’s animation, I initially developed the design of the posters, which I then used as a basis for the others design elements that were part of the brief.
Above is the general poster that announces the festival using striking images of performers from UN-retained which I cut out and re-configured against a starry green galaxy that I created in Photoshop. The posters below use imagery from other performances and events in the festival but all follow the same design and layout and make use of the starry green galaxy to create a cohesive set of posters. These posters have a dual purpose, giving equal prominence to the dates of the festival as well as the performance that it promotes.
The posters are various sizes from A3 to A0 and are part of a wider identity that I designed for MANIPULATE that has been adapted for a suite of deliverables including a programme guide, online and printed advertisements, social media assets, digital posters, lanyards, and a ‘takeover’ of The Skinny website.
Below is the MANIPULATE programme guide which is designed to loosely follow the general poster with the starry green galaxy background and the two cut-out figures from UN-retained with a third figure on the inside spread. In order to fit a lot of information in a small space, the typography sets up a hierarchy of information for the various events of the festival including use of symbols to indicate wheelchair access etc. The programme guide is 4 pages, A5, printed on a silk paper.
Below are some of the digital and screen assets that I designed for the festival including video advertisements, website announcements, social media assets, digital posters, and a ‘takeover’ of The Skinny website.
