LEMON ZEST WEBSITE AND BRANDING

ROLE
Chief Creative Director, Lemon Zest Festival

CONTRIBUTIONS 
User Experience Design, Branding, Art Direction

MEDIUM
Desktop | Mobile | Social Media

TIMELINE
March 2021-Present

THE TEAM
1 Chief Creative Director, 1 Logistics Director, 1 Production Lead, 1 Vibes Manager, 1 Social Media Producer

THE PROBLEM

Lemon Zest Festival is a local music and arts festival started by me and a few of my friends. It started because many of our friends were not able to perform due to the effects of the pandemic. We describe ourselves as:

“Lemon Zest is a festival in the DMV area bringing together fine artists, music acts, and folks in the community. When the world shut down this past year, we wanted a way to give back to the community that made us the artists that we are today. The name Lemon Zest Festival comes from the phrase “when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.”“

Lemon Zest is a music and arts festival for all ages. We hoped to bring together young budding and seasoned artists together to experience each other’s art and tunes. We also hope to highlight community organizations and businesses whose work we admire and align with our values of joy, community, and eclecticism.

We knew that in order to get the word out we would need a brand and a website. I began brainstorming different logo ideas.

THE LOGO

We had decided the festival was going to be called Lemon Zest early into planning the festival. I decided to try different approaches to illustrating lemons with varying typography. My initial instinct was to go with a lemon slice.

Something about the lemon slice felt off though. It felt like it could easily be mistaken for something else. I decided to try for a lemon wedge with different typography instead.

I took the logo back to the rest of the team for review. They liked the thicker lemon wedge because it felt playful and bold. I then began to incorporate the lemon wedge with some added color and different typography. This time deliberately going with type that would likely be part of our style guide. I went for typography that looked like it could be art deco or part of a vineyard to try different ways to present the identity. We ended up going for the bottom left logo as our final logo.

THE TYPE

We knew we wanted our typography to feel fresh but still accessible. We were inspired by 1920s Art Deco typography and landed on the fonts below.

1. Blakely Bold: This font feels like it could be hanging above a 1920s flapper party. The 2020s were supposed to be our “Roaring Twenties” and we wanted to reflect that in the design of our style guide in a way that was modern but referenced the last century’s romps.

2. Casablanca URW Medium: This font is feels both modern and classic, which is what we hope our festival to be in the future! It is also readable which makes it great for as a font used for content.

THE Colors

We knew we had to use yellow in our palette but also needed to find shades that would balance the brightness of yellow out. We eventually found a royal blue shade that we named Night Sky and were able to further build the palette with other colors after that. Below is the final palette.

The final shades in the color palette can be seen above. The main colors are lemon yellow, night sky, bark, and rind. Each color represents a part of a whole that makes a full lemon.

1. Lemon Yellow - This shade of yellow is bright and fresh like a lemon.

2. Night Sky - This shade of blue balances well with yellow but still feels young and bold like a night sky.

3. Bark - Bark is our darkest shade. It is an earthy dark brown almost black like the bark of a lemon tree.

4. Rind - Rind is a cream color similar to the rind of a lemon. Most people consider it bitter but the white balances the yellow to make a complete fruit just like we needed a pale shade for our palette.

The colors can also be seen as backgrounds for our logo for our various social media platforms.

WHY THESE CHOICES?

We once described wanting Lemon Zest to feel like a “wholesome college party.” We wanted it to feel nostalgic but also fresh and new. As we began planning the festival logistics I imagined it being like a summer garden party. The colors and type were reminiscent of all of these feelings but also of our values: joy, community, and eclecticism.

The Final Style Guide

Below is the final style guide used by the Lemon Zest team for the 2022 festival.

SOCIAL MEDIA PATTERNS

Below are examples of the style guide in action through social media templates.

We used these templates as well as variants with many of the same motifs to post through 2021-2022 to promote the 2022 festival.

BRINGING OUR STYLE TO THE WEBSITE

Now that we had a style guide, we needed to incorporate it into our website. Our website includes a page for artists, the community, sponsors, and an about page. We also have a contact form as well as link to tickets for our festival via Eventbrite.

Our landing page immediately states who we are and what our festival is about.

Our sponsorship page gave sponsors a chance to view our varying tiers. Our nav bar also includes a process bar so the user can see where they are on a given webpage.

We also included a secret page that includes a secret messaging board for anyone who finds it. We can’t give away where it is but all I can say is follow the brand!

REFLECTION + TAKEAWAYS

1. The decisions around the style guide were intentional in order to create a brand that was sustainable and maintain a sense of fun.

2. We left room to scale. Our colors and typography are malleable to change later down the line, which will help us sustain in the long run.

IMPACT

1. Our festival garnered attendance of over 150 people our first year.

2. We sold merch such as hats, shirts, stickers, and tote bags with elements of the style guide that garnered positive feedback.

3. We were able to secure funding of nearly 14 sponsors.

4. We were able to bring together an audience of kids, students, adults, working professionals, and parents under one event.

UPDATING THE STYLE GUIDE

After the 2022 festival, I decided to add pink to the style guide since we could get really creative by incorporating visual elements like pink lemonade into our promotion for the 2023 festival.