Djapo Cultural Arts Institute — 2026 Culture Fest

Festival identity and artist campaign 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 not only event design.

It was a way of giving 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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