The Arts & Humanities Alive! (AHA!) Festival is an annual festival held by Cleveland State University. It features national celebrities and events designed to draw in a broad audience. Their theme for the 2017 festival was storytelling and featured celebrities such as Yvette Nicole Brown, Karina Smirnoff, John Meacham, as well as many others.
With this project, I created a cohesive visual identity for the AHA! Festival that would aid in bringing in participants and allow them to have a fun and engaging experience. I also designed deliverables that would aid to break down the barriers that prevent certain people, such as minority individuals, from attending the festival.
One of the speakers at the event that year, Yvette Nicole Brown, had grown up in Cleveland. Now a famous hollywood celebrity, she was someone that people could relate with.
How could I leverage that connection?
To create the illusion of her being among them and being at the bus stop, the ad would feature a window and then her image would be on the opposite window facing inward.
This would appeal to the non-traditional "arts & humanities" audience that we were trying to reach.
One thing sure to get you attention would be a crosswalk made up of books. This is something that the people would have to interact with and would spur curiosity.
The crosswalk would need to be relatively simple in order to function as a safe and practical crosswalk. While it would not give detail about the event, it would make people curious and hopefully persuade them to look into the event for more information.
