As the Senior Designer without an Art or Creative Director, it falls on me to direct and manage the creative aspects on all big projects that come through the Creative Services department. With a team of eight designers, our team will produce over 900 pieces of design each year. Annually, I personally design on average, over two hundred signs, billboards, websites, advertisements, brochures, illustrations and other collateral, and head all branding concepts and logo design. Although we have design work throughout the year, the most important project is the annual Theme Branding for the Orange County Fair. The in-house creative department is tasked with creating a unique and vibrant brand that reflects the year’s tag line. Artwork that works across all different types of media, and hundreds of types of collateral.
After meeting with marketing we establish the key-points and goals the tag-line is trying to convey. We begin to sketch and conceptualize new ideas and artwork to produce a solution to meet those goals. After fleshing-out those ideas we work on the main centerpiece, the logo…
Each year’s fair logo has to be bright, inviting and exclaim the fair is coming and simple enough to be used on all different types of media, but complex enough to be used alone as the main artwork. Along with the main logo I am often tasked with providing up to ten alternative logos to be used for large and small applications, single-color silk-screens, black and white, as the main or secondary artwork.
Along with the major annual event (The OC Fair), the OC Fair & Event Center puts on multiple separate events which also provide branding and logo designing opportunities.
Some examples of large formats are utilized each year at the fair; billboards, bus shelters, property signage, backdrops, aerial billboards, truck wraps, bus wraps, train wraps, posters, digital readerboards, directional banners and many more.
Along with large format advertising, the Fair advertises in a number of publications I have had the good fortune to design including the LA Times, Orange County Register, Long Beach Press Telegram and San Pedro Today, among others. Each year the advertising has to be designed in a way that allowing a smooth transition from a focused campaign to a more promotional type of marketing.
Postcards, brochures, programs, badges, tickets, flyers, coupons, signage, calendars, maps, artist & event artwork, directional signs, stickers, t-shirt design, Souvenir pins, handbooks, merchant and package design
Static and animated digital banner ads.
2016 Fair Theme Artwork Photography by Chuck Pebenito