ABOUT

BRISTOL COMEDY GARDEN
A belly-laughing bonanza for Bristol.
The founders of 57 Festivals approached Oat Studio to rebrand the identities for a series of nationwide comedy festivals, the first being Bristol Comedy Garden. The festivals had been running for a number of years, and the graphics needed a boost to grab public attention and further project the personality-packed events, featuring the biggest names in UK comedy, such as Jack Dee, Sara Pascoe, Ed Gamble and Nina Conti.In previous years, the festival had commissioned an illustrator to supply a toolkit of illustrations that were implemented in a sparse and minimal fashion. After discussions with the client, we decided to expand and develop this and build a fully-illustrated border, packed with characters and interesting colourful abstract shapes. We spent time researching a suitable illustrator that would convey the right mix of fun and creativity, whilst not appearing too 'childish'. After whittling down a huge list of potentials, we selected Zac Fay, an Melbourne based illustrator with an arsenal of awesome odd-ball figures.We knew that the illustrations had to be flexible enough to be re-worked for event signage, social media and web use. Having a vast toolkit of wonderful characters and abstract shapes allowed us to make every aspect of the brand identity varied and exciting, whilst also maintaining a level of consistency.One of the biggest challenges was that the Bristol Comedy Garden was one of four events in the schedule – the events all needed to be differentiated from each other but have a similar aesthetic. We solved this by working on four different but complimentary colour palettes that could be applied to each festival location, and had some bespoke site-specific illustration elements, so that each poster had subtle differences. This allowed the posters to be distinctive, yet work as a series.The final outcome is a unique and exciting brand for Bristol Comedy Garden, that perfectly captures the playful fusion of good times and belly laughs.
Illustration: Zac Fay