Switchfoot Bro-Am
Event Branding, Advertising,
& Merchandising
Bro-Am is a charity surf contest and concert put on by the band Switchfoot. There are extra opportunities to donate to charity, such as their Benefit Party for which tickets can be purchased. For this project I designed VIP passes for the benefit party, t-shirts and tote bags, billboards, posters, and vertical pole signage.
My mood board shows some surfing images, some images of the ocean, and a piece of artwork drawn by Jon Foreman, the frontman of Switchfoot. I also have four different color palettes: I ended up going in the direction of the first one.
I was somewhat inspired by the Endless Summer posters, so I only used a few colors. I ended up choosing a bubble font to manipulate, and that gave me the direction of centering the image around bubbles. I had found some cool images of surfers from underneath (right)and I used those for inspiration. I cropped the figure because I didn't want that to be the focal point. I created a halftone pattern on the letters because it indirectly reminds me of bubbles, and because it fits the two-tone theme I have going. Finally, I added a gradient to the water to give the illusion of it getting deeper as well as to draw the eye downward through the text.
Mockups
Keepsake Badge
The badge is designed for the benefit party, an event costing money which goes to charity. There is a VIP package for the event and that is where the badge comes in.
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I decided to give the badge a different design, using the halftone pattern as a backdrop behind a text logo made without the bubbles. I did use bubbles to separate the 20 and 24. I put the Switchfoot logo on the lanyard followed by a stream of bubbles.
The T-shirt, tote bag, and bottle opener have a version of the text logo without the bubbles for better legibility. They are simple yet effective designs, showing a grouping of bubbles with the colors used in the advertising designs.
Merchandise
Reflections
I learned a lot about working with grids in type with this project. Actually, I became a huge fan of using grid systems and I use them frequently ever since doing this project. I also gained from having to think through the different types of advertisements and how text should be place on them. For example, posters or billboards which people will be driving past must have less and larger text than a poster that people can stop and look at. This was one of my favorite projects, as there is nothing more important and more impactful to me than Switchfoot, and the work that they do for the needy also deserves to be highlighted.