Design Forward: Building a Brand for the Designers of Tomorrow
Client: Personal Project
Role: Creative Director, Brand Designer, Graphic Designer
Formats: Branding, Landing Page Design, Social Media Content, Short-Form Copy
How do you create a design festival identity that feels bold, editorial, and truly built for designers?
Design Forward was a personal creative exercise, born out of a real-world pitch, a fictional event brought to life through layout, type, and image systems designed to resonate with a visually literate, design-savvy audience. Could I design something that felt real enough to promote, scroll through, and share?
The festival needed to feel fresh, yet grounded in real design principles. It was about building a voice that speaks to the people shaping the future of design, graphic designers, UX folks, creative coders, brand thinkers.
A clean editorial system meets expressive design energy.
The foundation of the identity was built around bold, expressive typography paired with a minimalistic, Bauhaus-inspired logo. The aim was to create something instantly recognisable without being overly ornamental. Headlines were large and confident, setting the tone for a festival that celebrates ideas and people at the cutting edge of design.
The colour palette was kept deliberately minimal: Soft Sand, Studio Red, and Pitch Black, tones chosen to feel tactile, modern, and editorial without overwhelming the content. This gave the whole identity a tactile, human feel while still feeling clean and contemporary.
Imagery played a key role in setting the emotional tone. I used AI tools to generate visuals that represented each topic in a conceptual, abstract way.
Why it matters.
This project helped me explore how to take a speculative concept and turn it into a living, scrollable experience. It became a space to test my approach to visual storytelling, AI art direction, and content systems.
It also served as a branding experiment: how far can you push simplicity before it breaks? How do you combine structure and emotion in a layout? What does a design-focused brand voice sound like?
Design Forward isn’t real. But the systems I built around it are. And they reflect how I work, strategic, detail-obsessed, and always looking to build something with both clarity and character.
Inspiration
Early Design Explorations
Brand Guidelines
