Monolith Music Festival
The 2008 MONOLITH Music Festival wrapped up in the middle of this month. It started for us here at Dayjob 6 months ago. We were commissioned to design the website and I was excited because I’d get to design something I was interested in. (the best thing – maybe the only thing- graphic designers can ever really hope for.)
We were also excited because we got to build a website that served as a pivot point for a national music festival, and we got to use Marquee our tool made for just this sort of occasion.
The festival directors liked what they saw, and extended our responsibilities to include the Art Direction for the entire festival. This was great news indeed. But good opportunities, like swords – and most everything else in life – have two edges.
We were apprehensive because we knew such an event had a near boundless scope to it. Think about this; 60 bands, 5 stages, 17 public sponsors, countless other entities and moving parts from event and sound production, vending, security, and legal staff whose actions all resonated upwards and outwards. All this activity effected the communications that we were responsible for articulating, and often, adjusting.
I have admiration, yet no envy for our colleagues, Josh Baker and Matt Fecher – the Festival Directors who served as the glue for all of these moving parts. Parts which did not always move in the same directions. Sponsorship changes and requests, line-up changes, and advertising material changes were all addressed, adapted, accommodated, and sometimes even improved upon.
In short, our predictions were true: design is a service, and a commitment at any level, of both creative communication and of business planning and adaptation. In hindsight, project management and consulting – an earnest contribution to the ongoing dialogue in manners both creative and of enterprise, will yield better results.
It’s been said that there is no difference between a janitor, an accountant, a dry-cleaner, and a graphic designer. They all get paid to make someone else look good. Yes, design is a service, like the others in this parable. A service whose scope and boundaries don’t really exists. At least they don’t if you are trying hard.
The festival was great. I think the design turned out pretty well too. I learned a few things through the project. I also learned a few things at the festival itself, like Avett Brothers might be most sincere and authentic band living a breathing today. (And breath hard they do.) They are real good, if for no other reason, because they try hard.
Posted by Todd Roeth on September 24th, 2008