Event Design – Lyssandra Rutherford

Having had quite a bit of positive feedback for the design in 2019, where I chose to go down the heavily filtered sunset in the sea photography route, this time I wanted a more hand-drawn illustrated style to the aesthetic, that would pay tribute to the airy summery retro vibes of seventies California surfing culture, and the many supremely cool surf posters that emerged from those times. Sadly, along with pretty much every other event worldwide in 2020, due to our lovely friend Rona, Armada had to be postponed. Luckily the festival was able to take place the following year.

Below is the base layer of the poster, designed so that various forms of text can be added over the top for the different uses. I layered photographs with illustration, sun burst photography, and real texture to give a bit of meatiness to the design, using real images of the sea for the sea, sky for the sky and sand for the sand. When it came to the smaller details I wanted to add texture of manmade materials, so the tents and vans were cut out of various different rusty metals. And I wanted to give a bit of dynamism to show the movement of the kites that were flying fiercely and proudly in the air, so I added gentle white sketch lines around each of them. All with a muted palette, but blended with vibrant summer colours this poster gives me such happy summer vibes which is what you want when thinking about a beach festival.

The final poster ended up being a bit more refined with more kites around the logo, and the white sketch lines around the kites and vans on the bottom left removed, which was not my choice, but I’m still happy with how the final poster came out.

Lewis Crathern Kitesurfer. Kitesurfing Armada 2019

Once again I had the pleasure of working with the brilliant team at Armada Events to bring an epic two night and three day kitesurfing and music festival to Hayling Island. Working closely with Dan Charlish, Director of Armada Events, my job was overseer of the look of the festival, the environmental design within the site, and all of the printed and online design that goes with a project of this scale.

The design I went for this year was all about that glorious warm sunset glow you get from being on a beach and in the water in the later part of the day. I shot the original photography for the poster myself and I gave it several different treatments and layers, all about sunshine, light leaks and sun spots to give it that extra level of richness and depth. Along with the poster, which came first, and then was used to inform the design for the whole event, came the brochure, which although was quite a simple A5 affair, there were tricky elements to it such as the kitesurfing schedule page and the intricate centrefold site and beach map page which holds all of the logos of the the sponsors and brands that take part in the event. Also, I designed the town posters and billboards, the beach flags, stage banners and the welcome banners, which are the first things you’ll see when driving up to the festival. Online, there was a social campaign leading up to the event too.

This year, 8,000 kitesurfers from all over the world attended the event, as well as local festival goers and general public, as the organisers saw it grow bigger than ever before. As always it was a hugely successful and enjoyable weekend, so much so that Armada Events were able to secure investment and support to take the festival even further for future years to come.