Once upon a time, we came (TO)Gather...
Guess what goes hand-in-hand with marketing and design: Event management! I’ve planned my fair share of events and every single one has had its own unique challenges and adventures. Recently, I started working with some dear friends to plan a side gig (event).
You know about side gigs, right? Side gigs are where something you do professionally (for me, this often includes: marketing or business plan writing/strategy, design for print/screen/web, brand story development, and random theatre things) winds up being something you’re known for and in a blink, you’re doing it for fun or friends.
This specific side gig was born from a desire my friends and I share to experience the 2017 IF:Gathering. None of us could pause our lives when it occurred IRL, but we didn’t want to miss out on something so incredibly special.
One major discussion we had for this side gig was how we would honor the original event’s branding while carefully communicating that we were not that event. We took our cues from the organization itself as they suggest attaching specific verbiage: “Inspired by IF:Gathering” to our own event name.
Our own event name. Yes....sure...we’d need one of those. Ahem. We came up with (TO) Gather because we are gathering our people together with this side gig event. Deep, right? Finally, the fun planning parts started with...the logo!
We wanted our logo (and our event) to adhere to IF’s mantra of simple and pure. We also wanted to infuse some fall colors into the logo since our event will be...wait for it...in the fall! Here’s our finished logo design:
In the end, the right choice for our event was a signature logo, pairing several typefaces - some harkening IF and some all us - for a slightly more casual feel than the IF-ers. Instead of an “on-the-nose” autumnal color palette, we infused just a bit more vibrancy into our logo's colors and will pair these hues with more muted tones for promotional pieces like this registration form header:
With the logo and design palette in place it’s time to dive in with a task list and calendar to count down to our little “side” gig. Stay tuned!