CAPITOL ROYALE
A 3 Day Music-Tech Festival
In 2018, Capitol Records began hosting Capitol Royale, a 3 day music-tech festival hosted at the famous Capitol Tower. The first festival of it’s kind to be put on by a major music label, the festival attracts music and technology enthusiasts from around the globe.
Watch the recap video from 2018 above to get a feel for our first Royale!
MY ROLE
1. To design, create, and oversee all physical and digital assets for the event and for all of the event promotion
2. To work with an in-house team and tech partners to create a festival website and weekend-of app
3. To recruit technology and creative corporations to participate in and sponsor the 24-hour hackathon, pre-hack party, and prizes
4. To run the 200+ person hackathon from start to finish with a team of amazing colleagues and volunteers
BRAND CONCEPT
The challenge with this project was developing a brand that was innovative, easy to understand, and cohesively encompassed the range of events at the festival.
After months of ideation, deliberation, and sponsor recruitment, our team settled on an overarching theme for the weekend: “Music on the Move.” The weekend sought to spark conversation around ways in which music and technology, especially in cars, could come together to drive innovation. Using that concept along with the rough schedule of events, I identified out the four main pillars of the weekend: a music festival, a technology expo, a 24 hour hackathon, and a vinyl (or “wax”) fair. Then, pulling out circular motifs from each, I pulled out and designed four pillars for the festival.
But while these four matched in aesthetic, I still wanted a poster that brought all the parts together to show that each part was dependent on the other, just like the music and tech communities together.
The result was the turntable image in the poster below.
Interlocking the four motifs into one poster, this image became the main symbol for the event. What one may not notice with the naked eye is that it has a hidden message in binary in the background of it for the savvy to decode. Can you figure out what it says?
SIGNAGE & TICKETING
This festival was not very complicated in terms of tiered entry, but it was going to be a bit confusing in layout as the general public had never been in or around the Capitol Tower (access is restricted to just employees, other than for special events such as this). In an effort to aid festival-goers and volunteers as much as possible, I color-coded all signage and ticketing materials at the event.
Pink shirts, pink badges, pink signs?
Crew members, crew badges, informational signs. Here to help.
Blue shirts, blue badges?
VIP guests. Be attentive.
White badge, white wristband?
Press. Give them access!
Working with a small but mighty team of developers and designers, I helped product manage the creation of both a Capitol Royale website and web-app for the festival with a team of internal stakeholders and partners at Glitch.
The website covers a wide range of topics pertaining to the festival and served as an information hub leading up to the big weekend. Here, sponsors, hackers, attendees, journalists, and speakers alike could find details they needed to sign up, lend their talents, or buy tickets and attend.
