Carabana Festival Re-Design
This is my redesign of Toronto’s very own Caribana festival, conducted in my third year Communication Design 2 class. The goal of this redesign is to brand the festival in such a way that engages more of an audience appeal. Some design objectives I focused on during my design process were the re-design of the event posters; to improve audience engagement, e-tickets; to improve readability, and the event program; to not only provide seamless engagement with the event but to also create a souvenir for audiences attending.
Communication Design
January 2021 - April 2021
Using InDesign & Photoshop
Why Caribana?
I decided to redesign the Caribana Festival specifically because I have always wanted to attend this festival personally, but was never exposed to any form of advertisement or audience engagement. The Caribana Festival is the largest cultural festival in North America, filled with games, activities, parties, and performances. This festival encourages each attendee to participate in all cultural aspects. Some of the aspects I focused on within this event was strictly the major parties, events, and parades happening throughout the festival weekend.
 DayLit event posterDayLit event poster, with its own visual identity separate from the Caribana Festival theme. |  DayFete event posterDayFete event poster, with its own visual identity separate from the Caribana Festival theme. |  Caribana Toronto WordmarkOriginal Caribana word mark |  Carnival Nights event posterCarnival Nights event poster, with its own visual identity separate from the Caribana Festival theme. |
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 The 6ix event posterThe 6ix event poster, with its own visual identity separate from the Caribana Festival theme. |
The Problem
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any e-tickets, posters, or programs for previous Caribana festivals. This was a serious problem, as I was only able to find individual advertisements and posters for each event. This was confusing from an audience’s perspective, as each event didn’t appear to be a part of the Caribana Festival at all, because of the lack of visual continuity and consistent signage.
The Goal
The prompt for this assignment was to choose a festival; that lasts at least 3 days; to redesign and create a program, e-ticket for 3 events, and poster to advertise it. The re-designs aesthetic followed a culturally representational approach, in order to engage viewers and attracted a wide variety of audiences.
The Goal
The prompt for this assignment was to choose a festival; that lasts at least 3 days; to redesign and create a program, e-ticket for 3 events, and poster to advertise it. The re-designs aesthetic followed a culturally representational approach, in order to engage viewers and attracted a wide variety of audiences.
FINAL DESIGNS
Poster Design
This is my final poster design, I decided to use a total of four printed colours, taken straight from the image itself. Since my target demographic is young singles, families, and party people, providing an array of vibrant colours accompanied by the visual imagery created a seamlessly inviting design. Intended to attract a youthful audience I decided to use the font ‘Vanilla’ for Caribana’s visual identity. This decorative font is partially abstract and bold enough to improve readability. Since the festival stretches over an entire weekend with multiple day and night events, It was crucial for my visual identity to be scalable and applicable to every individual event.
E-Ticket Design
The above images are the three final e-ticket designs for three different events happening throughout the Caribana Festival weekend. Each design follows a modern, colourful, and sleek design making it easy for users to locate their event tickets on their mobile devices. The use of sans serif fonts improves readability on the gradient background.
Program Design
After finalizing the visual identity of the Caribana festival, including the Poster and e-ticket designs. I was able to start designing the festivals program based off of my collection of information, images, and text. This program utilizes imagery to not only entice viewers to attend each event, but to also commemorate the festival as a whole, making this program a souvenir for all attendees. The use of gradient background was a key element throughout my layout design, I chose to incorporate this aspect as it brought an energetic feel to the overall design.
One struggle I had while creating this program was the amount of content needed to describe each event. Using a three-column grid I broke up the content into three sections, allowing for more information to be placed on one page. There is a constant theme that is present throughout my designs, through the use of vibrant colours and photography. Moreover, I feel as though I solved the original problem that the Caribana festival had. Through the use of a consistent visual identity, exciting colours, and photography, I believe that this festival will gain greater traction in the future.
