Marigold

A three day music festival on a Dorset farm. Wes Wilson drew the shape first and swelled the letters until they filled it, so his type has no fixed width and no baseline. Nothing here is set to a size either. Every line is fitted to the arc it sits on.

Client
Fictional, self-initiated
Sector
Music festival
Scope
Mark, poster system, site, wayfinding, screen
Method
After Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso
Built
SVG text on arcs
01

The mark

The name in one drawn face, offset in the second colour of whichever pair the year is using. There is no flat version and no single colour version.

Primary lockup with a ring field

Offset
Three and a half hundredths of the cap height, down and right, in the pair's second colour. It is the vibration in miniature.
Colour
The mark takes the year's pair. It has no permanent colour, which is why the festival can look different every summer and still look like itself.
Ground
Cream or one of the pair. Never white, never black.
Never
Never set the name in the body face. If it will not fit as a drawn word, the space is wrong, not the word.
02

The vibration

Moscoso put colours of equal lightness side by side so the eye cannot settle on the edge between them. Swap the pair and watch the boundary start to move. That is the effect, and it only works when neither colour is darker than the other.

Pair

Equal value
Both colours sit within about five per cent of each other in lightness. That is the whole condition.
Consequence
The artwork is hard to photograph and worse to reproduce in newsprint, which is why the ticket and the map use flat colour instead.
Accessibility
Nothing a visitor must read is set in a vibrating pair. Times, prices and directions are ink on cream, always.
Per year
One pair for the whole summer, chosen in January and printed on everything from the poster to the bin stickers.
03

Colour

Four pairs exist and one is chosen per year. Within a pair neither colour leads, which is why they are written down in no order and printed at the same weight.

Ember#F25C05 · #E8007CThe founding pair. Used in the first year and every fifth.
Reef#00A896 · #E63946The strongest vibration of the four. Hardest to print.
Meadow#7B2FF7 · #C6F52AReads best at distance. Used for the road signage year.
Harbour#0089CF · #FF7A1AThe gentlest. Chosen when the line-up is quieter.
Cream
The stock colour, and the only place a third colour appears. It is a paper, not an ink.
Ink
A warm near black for all practical type. It is never part of a pair.
Order
Pairs have no first and second colour in principle. In practice the mark uses one consistently for a year so the offset does not flip mid season.
04

Typography

A drawn face for anything on an arc and a plain grotesque for anything a visitor needs at eleven at night in a field. The two never appear in the same sentence.

Drawn
Sonsie OneMarigold
Stage
Sonsie One 24The Hollow
Practical
Rubik 16 / 26Gates open at noon on Friday and the last bus leaves at two. Bring boots. The bottom field floods even when it has not rained here.
Signage
Rubik 700, trackedCamping · Water · First aid · Car park B
Rule
If it goes on an arc it is drawn. If it goes on a sign it is set. There is no third case.
Legibility
The poster is allowed to be slow. The map is not, and it uses none of the poster's devices.
05

Applications

The roundel is the festival. It goes on the poster whole, on the wristband as a repeat, and on the programme cropped to a band across the top.

Wristband, 250 × 20 mm

Saturday

  • 13.00Open mic, the Hollow
  • 15.30Ilse Brandt
  • 17.00Two Winters
  • 19.30Nera
  • 21.00Faultline
  • 23.00Late tent, until three

Stage times move. The board by the gate is right and this is not.

Programme, A5

Line-upTicketsGetting hereCamping

Three days
in a field

Fourteenth to the sixteenth of August, Holloway Farm, Dorset. Two thousand tickets and no sponsors.

Get a ticket

Website

14 – 16 AugustHolloway Farm

Poster, A1

Camping The Hollow Water

Site signage, painted ply

06

What breaks it

Three of these make the poster easier to read and kill the effect. The fourth makes it unreadable in the one place where reading matters.

× Marigold
Do not pair with cream A light against a mid tone has a settled edge. The eye locks on and the whole optical effect is gone.
× Marigold
Do not set the name Set in the practical face it becomes a normal festival. The drawn word is the only thing that is not generic.
×
Do not fade it back Dropping the artwork to a tint so type sits on top removes the vibration and leaves a texture.
× FIRST AID
CAR PARK B
WATER
Do not sign the site in a pair Directions get read at night by tired people. Practical information is ink on cream, with no exceptions.