Djapo Cultural Arts Institute
2026 Culture Fest
Festival identity and artist spotlight system for a living cultural tradition
For Djapo Cultural Arts Institute’s 2026 Culture Fest, I developed a visual system for a festival rooted in dance, music, teaching, lineage, and cultural transmission.
The theme, Sacred Threads: Where Culture Lives, Not in the Past — but in Us, needed to feel alive, not archival. The work had to honor tradition while still functioning as a contemporary festival campaign across print, digital, and on-site materials.
The visual direction used bold color, brush textures, layered portraits, rough type, and strong figure-ground contrast to create a system that felt energetic, handmade, and public-facing.
The campaign included festival flyers, artist spotlight graphics, and promotional materials designed to introduce performers and instructors while keeping the larger festival identity recognizable.
This was more than event design. The work gave each artist presence while keeping the festival connected as one body of work.
Project details
Client: Djapo Cultural Arts Institute
Role: Creative Direction / Festival Campaign Design / Graphic Design
Work: Festival flyer, postcard/flyer system, artist spotlight graphics, promotional materials, social media assets
Context: 2026 Dance & Drum Culture Fest
Result: Built a flexible visual system for a multi-artist cultural festival across print and digital materials
Why this mattered
Festival design has to do more than announce dates and names.
It has to carry energy, context, and respect. It has to help the public understand what kind of experience they are being invited into, while giving the artists enough visual presence to feel specific and honored.
For Djapo, the goal was to create a campaign that felt rooted, expressive, and usable across many pieces.
The system needed to hold the festival together without flattening the people inside it.
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Culture Fest Program Design
Djapo Culture Arts needed a printed program that could do more than hold a schedule. The event brought together artists, performers, vendors, community partners, and guests, so the program had to work as both a guide and a keepsake.
I designed the Culture Fest program as part of a larger event communications system that included promotional materials, artist spotlight graphics, and social media assets. The goal was to give the festival a consistent public-facing presence while keeping the information clear, warm, and easy to use on the day of the event.
The program organized the event details, participant information, sponsor recognition, and visual direction into one piece that felt connected to the larger campaign. It supported the practical needs of the festival while giving Djapo a polished printed piece to place directly in the hands of attendees.
This kind of work matters because event materials are not only decorative. They help people understand where they are, what is happening, who is involved, and why the event matters. For community-centered events, that clarity becomes part of the experience.
